Listening to Silences New Essays in Feminist Criticism [Paperback]

Thirty years ago, in a lecture at the Radcliffe Institute, Tillie Olsen first addressed the problem of silences in literature--paving the way for future explorations of the subject, including her landmark work,Silences. The subject of silences and silencing--as fact, as trope, as lens through which to understand literary history--has been central to feminist criticism ever since.
InListening to Silences, a group of distinguished feminist literary critics reevaluates Olsen's heritage to reassert, extend, redefine, and question her insights, and to probe the dynamics of silence and silencing as they operate today in literature, criticism, and the academy. The book traces for the first time the genealogy of an important American critical tradition, one that still influences contemporary debates about feminism, multiculturalism, and the literary canon.
Contributors toListening to Silencesinclude Kate Adams, Norma Alarcon, Joanne Braxton, Sharon Zuber, King-Kok Cheung, Constance Coiner, Robin Dizard, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Diana Hume George, Elaine Hedges, Carla Kaplan, Patricia Laurence, Rebecca Mark, Diane Middlebrook, Carla L. Peterson, Lillian Robinson, Deborah Silverton Rosenfelt, Judith L. Sensibar, and Judith Bryant Wittenberg.

Because of this wide range of critical texts and perspectives, this would be an excellent text to use as part of an undergraduate or graduate course [focusing] on women's writing and/or feminism in the American context...These essays could serve as models for their own criticism as well as aids to reading and classroom discussion....For readers interested in current critical/postmodern readings of speech and silence in American feminist thought and writing, this anthology will present a valuable supplemtn and reference to their thought and work. --MELUS

Paying homage to the wealth of conceptual possibilities first introduced by Tillie Olsen, this collection is admirable for its rl“B