Gender and Narrativity

Book excerpt: It is impossible to imagine a community that is not divided into at least two gender groups. It is equally impossible to imagine a community that does not tell or enact stories. The relationship between these universal aspects of human culture is the mainspring of Gender and Narrativity. From Genesis to Freud, the Western narrative tradition tells the same old story of masculine dominance/feminine subservience as a matter of divine will or natural truth. Here, nine Canadian scholars challenge and interpret this tradition, in effect "re-telling" the story of gender, and themselves intervening in the narrative process. Critical readings from a wide range of literary texts - medieval and modern, European and Canadian - replace abstract theory in these studies, while sociology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, deconstruction and new history are the axes of discussion. This book exemplifies the current range and diversity of Canadian critical writing.