Ecocritical Menopause
Women, Literature, Environment, "The Change"
Published on 11. July 2024
Book
Hardback
210 pages
978-1-6669-6458-5 (ISBN)
Description
Ecocritical Menopause: Women, Literature, Environment, "The Change" is the first volume of its kind to bring together cross-sectional ecofeminist voices privileging women's menopausal positionality within literary works. This collection reexamines menopause across the disciplinary fields of ecofeminism and ecocriticism as clearly the most neglected phase of the menstrual cycle and aims to develop a critical discourse in counterpoint to the persistent cultural and critical legacies that sustain underrating women in midlife.
In highlighting selected literary representations of female being in transition, this volume includes:
* Exploration of the core motifs mediating the fashioning of menopausal women, including biology, the body, body shaming, climacterium, hysteria, the crone/hag figure, femininity, gender, identity, reproduction, sexlessness and asexuality
* Reexamination of histo-cultural biases that continue to perpetuate a devaluation of women after menopause, such as ageism, degeneration, loss of fertility and myths of essentialism, patriarchy and hegemony, social taboos, the medicalization of menopause, and cultural "menophobia"
* Analysis of literature genres in which we find portraitures of peri/post/menopause subjectivity, such as autofiction, crime fiction, detective fiction, folktales, frame tale, fiction, mystery, poetry, short story, and the "whodonit."
In highlighting selected literary representations of female being in transition, this volume includes:
* Exploration of the core motifs mediating the fashioning of menopausal women, including biology, the body, body shaming, climacterium, hysteria, the crone/hag figure, femininity, gender, identity, reproduction, sexlessness and asexuality
* Reexamination of histo-cultural biases that continue to perpetuate a devaluation of women after menopause, such as ageism, degeneration, loss of fertility and myths of essentialism, patriarchy and hegemony, social taboos, the medicalization of menopause, and cultural "menophobia"
* Analysis of literature genres in which we find portraitures of peri/post/menopause subjectivity, such as autofiction, crime fiction, detective fiction, folktales, frame tale, fiction, mystery, poetry, short story, and the "whodonit."
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
1 BW Illustration
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
499 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-6669-6458-5 (9781666964585)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
07/2024
1st Edition
Lexington Books
€90.99
Available for download
Persons
Nicole Anae is senior lecturer in literary and cultural studies at Central Queensland University.
Content
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Nicole Anae
Part I: Ecocritical Readings of Menopause in Chaucer and Literatures of the Nineteenth Century
Chapter 1: Ecofeminism and the Wife of Bath's Loathly Lady
Lesley Kordecki
Chapter 2: From Becoming to Being: The Material-Semiotic Abhumanity of Peri-to-Post-Menopausal Women in the Victorian Gothic
Nicole C. Dittmer
Chapter 3: Rehabilitating the Witch: An Ecocritical Reading of "Haensel and Gretel"
Nicole Anae
Part II: Ecocritical Readings of Menopause in Contemporary Women's Writing
Chapter 4: From Brushing Cats to Olive Kitteridge: An Ecocritical Approach to Older Women in Selected Literature
Benay Blend
Chapter 5: The Nature of the Peri/Post/Menopausal Detective: From Jane Marple to Jessica Fletcher to Vera Stanhope
Casey A. Cothran
Chapter 6: The Change by Kirsten Miller: An Ecofeminist Manifesto for Menopause
Nadia Mead
Part III: International Perspectives of Ecocritical Menopause
Chapter 7: Eventing the Menopause: Reading of Peri/Post-Menopausal Women in Chinese Novels
CHAN Kit-Sze Amy
Chapter 8: Absences and Solitude: Representation of Older Women and their Ecosystem within Select Works by Indian Women Novelists
Swapna Gopinath
Chapter 9: The Birth of Japanese Literature on Menopause in the Anthropocene: Reading Heikei-ki [???; An Account of Menopause] by Japanese Queer Ecofeminist Poet Ito Hiromi
Keitaro Morita
Part IV: Future Directions in Ecocritical Menopause
Afterword: Ecocritical Menopause Studies: An Emergent Investigative Field
Nicole Anae
About the Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Nicole Anae
Part I: Ecocritical Readings of Menopause in Chaucer and Literatures of the Nineteenth Century
Chapter 1: Ecofeminism and the Wife of Bath's Loathly Lady
Lesley Kordecki
Chapter 2: From Becoming to Being: The Material-Semiotic Abhumanity of Peri-to-Post-Menopausal Women in the Victorian Gothic
Nicole C. Dittmer
Chapter 3: Rehabilitating the Witch: An Ecocritical Reading of "Haensel and Gretel"
Nicole Anae
Part II: Ecocritical Readings of Menopause in Contemporary Women's Writing
Chapter 4: From Brushing Cats to Olive Kitteridge: An Ecocritical Approach to Older Women in Selected Literature
Benay Blend
Chapter 5: The Nature of the Peri/Post/Menopausal Detective: From Jane Marple to Jessica Fletcher to Vera Stanhope
Casey A. Cothran
Chapter 6: The Change by Kirsten Miller: An Ecofeminist Manifesto for Menopause
Nadia Mead
Part III: International Perspectives of Ecocritical Menopause
Chapter 7: Eventing the Menopause: Reading of Peri/Post-Menopausal Women in Chinese Novels
CHAN Kit-Sze Amy
Chapter 8: Absences and Solitude: Representation of Older Women and their Ecosystem within Select Works by Indian Women Novelists
Swapna Gopinath
Chapter 9: The Birth of Japanese Literature on Menopause in the Anthropocene: Reading Heikei-ki [???; An Account of Menopause] by Japanese Queer Ecofeminist Poet Ito Hiromi
Keitaro Morita
Part IV: Future Directions in Ecocritical Menopause
Afterword: Ecocritical Menopause Studies: An Emergent Investigative Field
Nicole Anae
About the Contributors