Books in the Routledge Library Editions: Women, Feminism and Literature series

Responding to a fundamental challenge from feminism, this book proposes that all narrative and its reading are intrinsically inflected by sexual politics. Various approaches represented here demonstrate problems of confronting the gendered pleasures of reading. Questions about self, sexuality and identity within specific historical formations are raised. The objective is to frame, describe and unearth the notion of `men as readers¿ as a project rather than as the usual, unquestioned normative procedure.Drawing eclectically upon Marxist, psychoanalytic and discourse theory, the essays set out readings of popular texts and genres ¿ the Western, the sentimental novel, detective and crime fiction, political thrillers and horror and science fiction ¿ in the interest of provoking other readers to consider critical study of popular fiction as unthinkable without gender as a central concern.

Julia Kristeva's blend of the literary with the psychoanalytic places her work central to current thinking, from semiotics and critical theory to feminism and psychoanalysis. Her profound understanding of the dynamics of intention and creativity mark her out as one of the leading theoreticians of desire. Each essay in this volume offers new insight into the many aspects that make up Kristeväs thought, ranging from her analyses of sexual difference, female temporality and the perceptions of the body to the mental states of abjection and melancholia, and their representation in painting and literature.