This document provides information on composed/comprised, feminist criticism, lesbian/gay/queer criticism, and terms used in these types of literary analysis. It explains that "composed" means made up of some or all parts, while "comprise" means to contain all parts, with the whole coming before parts. It then outlines the objectives and waves of feminist criticism, focusing on uncovering misogyny and the female experience. It also summarizes lesbian, gay, and queer criticism in examining oppression beyond sexism. Finally, it lists common terms and textual clues used in these analyses, such as homosocial bonding and same-sex doubles. Typical questions asked by these critiques

1. ELIT 48C Class 5
Composed or Comprised
The board is composed/
comprised of five members.

2.  Composed means, more or less, “made up of” — and when
you say something is composed of {these things} you may
or may not be including all of the {things} of which it is
made, opting for only the items most relevant to making
your point.
 To comprise means “to contain” and the correct usage will
usually include ALL the parts making up the whole. Oh, and
with comprise, the whole should come before the parts.
 Thus, the board comprises five members, whereas five
members compose (or make up) the board. It is also
correct to say that the board is composed (not comprised)
of five members.

3. AGENDA
 Lecture:
 Feminist Criticism
 Lesbian, Gay, and Queer
Criticism
 Discussion:
 QHQs and The Great
Gatsby

4. Feminist Criticism

5.  Feminist criticism is concerned with “the ways in which
literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce or
undermine the economic, political, social, and
psychological oppression of women" (Tyson). This school of
theory looks at how aspects of our culture are inherently
patriarchal (male dominated) and “this critique strives to
expose the explicit and implicit misogyny in male writing
about women" (Richter 1346). This misogyny, Tyson reminds
us, can extend into diverse areas of our culture: "Perhaps
the most chilling example [...] is found in the world of
modern medicine, where drugs prescribed for both sexes
often have been tested on male subjects only" (83).
Feminist Theory and Criticism

6. The objectives of the criticism include the
following:
1. To uncover and develop a female tradition of
writing
2. To interpret symbolism of women’s writing
so that it will be lost or ignored by the male
point of view.
3. To rediscover old texts
4. To analyze women writers and their writing’s
from a female perspective
5. To increase awareness of the sexual politics
of language and style.

7. Feminist criticism has, in many
ways, followed what some
theorists call the three waves
of feminism:

8. First Wave Feminism
 Ran from late 1700s-early 1900's: writers like Mary
Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792)
highlight the inequalities between the sexes. Activists like
Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull contribute to the
women's suffrage movement, which leads to National
Universal Suffrage in 1920 with the passing of the
Nineteenth Amendment

9. Second Wave Feminism
 From early 1960s-late 1970s: building on more equal
working conditions necessary in America during World
War II, movements such as the National Organization
for Women (NOW), formed in 1966, cohere feminist
political activism. Writers like Simone de Beauvoir (Le
deuxième sexe, 1972) and Elaine Showalter established
the groundwork for the dissemination of feminist
theories dove-tailed with the American Civil Rights
movement.

10. Third Wave Feminism
 From early 1990s-present: resisting the perceived
essentialist (over generalized, over simplified) ideologies and
a white, heterosexual, middle class focus of second wave
feminism, third wave feminism borrows from post-structural
and contemporary gender and race theories to expand on
marginalized populations' experiences. Writers like Alice
Walker work to “reconcile [feminism] with the concerns of
the black community [and] the survival and wholeness of her
people, men and women both, and for the promotion of
dialog and community as well as for the valorization of
women and of all the varieties of work women perform"
(Tyson 97).

11. Questions Feminist Critics Ask
about Literary Text

14. Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Criticism

15. Lesbian criticism is concerned with issues of personal
identity and politics analogous to those analyzed by
feminists (see chapter 4). However, while feminism
addresses issues related to sexism and the difficulties
involved in carving out a space for personal identity and
political action beyond the influence of sexist ideologies,
lesbian critics address issues related to both sexism and
heterosexism. In other words, lesbian critics must deal
with the psychological, social, economic, and political
oppression fostered not only by patriarchal male
privilege, but by heterosexual privilege as well. (Tyson
322-23)
Lesbian Criticism

16. Gay Criticism
The kinds of analyses that tend to engage the attention of gay
critics often fall under the heading of gay sensibility. How does
being gay influence the way one sees the world, sees oneself
and others, creates and responds to art and music, creates and
interprets literature, or experiences and expresses emotion? In
a heterosexist culture such as the one we inhabit at the turn of
the twenty-first century in America, gay sensibility includes an
awareness of being different, at least in certain ways, from the
members of the mainstream, dominant culture, and the
complex feelings that result from an implicit, ongoing social
oppression. In other words, part of seeing the world as a gay
man includes the ways in which one deals with being oppressed
as a gay man. Among others, three important domains of gay
sensibility, all of which involve responses to heterosexist
oppression, are drag, camp, and dealing with the issue of
AIDS. (Tyson 330)

17. Queer Theory
For queer theory, categories of sexuality cannot be defined by such
simple oppositions as homosexual/heterosexual. Building on
deconstruction’s insights into human subjectivity (selfhood) as a
fluid, fragmented, dynamic collectivity of possible “selves,” queer
theory defines individual sexuality as a fluid, fragmented, dynamic
collectivity of possible sexualities. Our sexuality may be different
at different times over the course of our lives or even at different
times over the course of a week because sexuality is a dynamic
range of desire. Gay sexuality, lesbian sexuality, bisexuality, and
heterosexuality are, for all of us, possibilities along a continuum of
sexual possibilities. And what these categories mean to different
individuals will be influenced by how they conceive their own
racial and class identities as well. Thus, sexuality is completely
controlled neither by our biological sex (male or female) nor by the
way our culture translates biological sex into gender roles
(masculine or feminine). Sexuality exceeds these definitions and
has a will, a creativity, an expressive need of its own. (Tyson 335)

18.  Finally, lesbian, gay, and queer criticism often rely on
similar kinds of textual evidence. For example, in
addition to the more obvious forms of textual cues—
such as homoerotic imagery and erotic encounters
between same-sex characters—there are rather subtle
textual cues that can create a homoerotic atmosphere
even in an otherwise heterosexual text, as we saw in the
examples of lesbian, gay, and queer criticism provided
earlier. No single textual cue can stand on its own as
evidence of a homoerotic atmosphere in a text. Nor can a
small number of such cues support a lesbian, gay, or
queer reading. But a preponderance of these cues,
especially if coupled with other kinds of textual or
biographical evidence, can strengthen a lesbian, gay, or
queer interpretation even of an apparently heterosexual
text. (Tyson 339)

19. Typical questions:
1. What are the politics (ideological agendas) of specific gay, lesbian,
or queer works, and how are those politics revealed in...the work's
thematic content or portrayals of its characters?
2. What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of a specific
lesbian, gay, or queer works?
3. What does the work contribute to our knowledge of queer, gay, or
lesbian experience and history, including literary history?
4. How is queer, gay, or lesbian experience coded in texts that are by
writers who are apparently homosexual?
5. How might the works of heterosexual writers be reread to reveal an
unspoken or unconscious lesbian, gay or queer presence? That is,
does the work have an unconscious lesbian, gay or queer desire or
conflict that it submerges?

20. More Questions
6. What does the work reveal about the operations (socially,
politically, psychologically) homophobic?
7. How does the literary text illustrate the problematics of sexuality
and sexual "identity," that is the ways in which human sexuality
does not fall neatly into the separate categories defined by the
words homosexual and heterosexual?
8. What elements in the text exist in the middle, between the
perceived masculine/feminine binary? In other words, what
elements exhibit traits of both (bisexual)?
9. What elements of the text can be perceived as being masculine
(active, powerful) and feminine (passive, marginalized) and how
do the characters support these traditional roles?
10. What sort of support (if any) is given to elements or characters
who question the masculine/feminine binary? What happens to
those elements/characters?

21. Terms, Signs, and Definitions
in literature

22.  Homosocial bonding—
 The depiction of strong emotional ties between same-sex
characters.
 Gay or lesbian “signs”—
 “feminine” male characters or “masculine” female characters.
 coded signs created by the gay or lesbian subculture itself.
 Same-sex “doubles”—
 same-sex characters who look alike, act alike, or have parallel
experiences.
 Transgressive sexuality—
 A text’s focus on transgressive sexuality, including transgressive
heterosexuality (such as extramarital romance).

23. Discuss
Feminist and
Gay,
Lesbian, and
Queer
Criticism
Discuss in your groups: Five
minutes!

24. 1. How [or] has patriarchal language effected our perspectives and
paradigms?
a. Q: Can specific uses of language, such as congressman, fireman, or
Spanish, such as “hermanos” being able to refer to as both brothers and
sisters, be sexist?
2. Can we truly break away from a patriarchal society? How/why or why not?
a. Q: The hard times in America have taken over hundreds of years to resolve,
but we still have ghosts lingering—slavery and racism for example. With
that being said, is it even possible for us to move completely out of a
patriarchal society into a world were feminism is no longer necessary?
3. What role does power play in the disconnection from patriarchal
ideologies?
4. How is feminist criticism associated with “giving a voice to the voiceless?”
5. How does the patriarchal gender role affect women in their older years?
6. Why and how are female feminists undermined by the patriarchy?
QHQs Feminist Criticism

25. Feminist Criticism on The Great Gatsby
1. Q: Could Jordan Baker be considered a feminist?
2. How are patriarchal attitudes explored in the Great
Gatsby?
a. Q: Is prosperity only reserved for males in the novel?
Comparing then and now, how has earning money
changed for both sexes?
3. Q: How does the idea of social constructionism present
itself in The Great Gatsby and how does it connect to
the characters?
a. Q: Do Nick and Gatsby fit the standard, masculine
role created by society? Or do they merge parts of
both femininity and masculinity?

26. QHQs: Gay, Lesbian, Queer Criticism
1. Q: What constitutes an LGBT literary text?
2. Q: Why is queer theory an important and necessary
addition to both gay and lesbian theories?
3. Q: Is it important to know the orientation of the
author before reading the story? Does it have a
huge impact on how the story is read or
understood?

27. QHQ: similarities and intersections
1. Q: Are there any similarities between the Feminist criticism
and the LGBT criticism?
2. Q: How is Feminist criticism different from LGBT criticism?
3. Q: Does the challenging of traditional gender roles in many
perspectives of feminism exclude/challenge gender
identifications in the LGBTQ community? If so, how can
feminist ideals and LGBTQ ideals resolve the disparity?
4. Q: If femininity/women were not socially constructed as the
lesser in our society, is it possible that homosexuality (at least
for men) may never have become something so unacceptable?
5. Q: How does the patriarchal ideology affect those who do not
identify with either gender?

28. HOMEWORK
 Read: Critical Theory
Today: Chapter 11
“African American
Criticism” 359-409
 Post #5: QHQ: African
American Criticism