Published in 1984
288 pages
What is this book about?
“These essays on women poets and visual artists, on myth and feminist criticism, have taken their present shape over a period of six years; but the question that inspired them first emerged more than ten years ago when I taught my first courses in women’s studies and myth studies as part of the developing interdisciplinary curriculum at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. I wondered: would contemporary poetry by women provide an illuminating case study of mythological change? In the past, I reasoned, new myths arose in times of profound cultural crisis such as our own. Perhaps one of the most important changes of this century has been the phenomenon of population explosion, which, in countries where medical technology has also prolonged the human lifespan, has meant that women have no longer needed to concern themselves primarily with the survival of the species through procreation. For the first time in history, large numbers of women have been free to pursue activities of their own choosing outside the home. Such a profound change in the human situation would seem likely to affect our cultural mythology, and the most logical place to look for such effects would be in creative works by women. My question presupposed that myths change in relationship to history; that creative individuals play a role in changing them; and, most important, that myths are still significant phenomena in our lives. Thus one question, about the difference women poets might make in our cultural mythology, became many: Why are myths significant? How are they related to history? How do they interact with individual lives? How do they change? How much do they change? These and other questions were addressed in dozens of books which I began to read along with the poems by women that occupied the center of my attention. Of course, I know now that many critics and many books will be required to answer my initial query, and I offer this book as a probe into the question rather than a definitive study.”
(Excerpt from the preface by the author)
