Elaine Showalter is an American literary critic who was one of the founders of feminist literary criticism in the US. In her 1979 work "Towards a Feminist Poetics", she divides feminist criticism into the woman as reader and the woman as writer, coining the term "gynocritics" for the latter. She outlines three phases of feminist criticism - the feminine phase from 1840-1880, the feminist phase from 1880-1920, and the female phase from 1920 to the present, characterized respectively by women following male norms, visions of female utopias, and a focus on differentiating female from male writing.

1. S. Sindhiya
Assistant Professor
Department of English(SF)
SBK College, Aruppukottai.
Class : II M.A.English
Subject : Contemporary Literary Theories
Topic :TOWARDS A FEMINIST POETICS

2. TOWARDS A FEMINIST POETICS
Elaine Showalter:
• born on January 21, 1941
• American literary critic
• one of the founders of the Feminist Literary
Criticism in USA

3. Towards a Feministic Poetry
• Published in 1979
• Showalter divides feminist criticism into two
sections
1) The woman as reader or feminist critique
2) The woman as writer or gynocritics
• She has coined the term ‘gynocritics’

4. Three phases of Feminist Criticism
1) The feminine phase- 1840-1880
2) The feminist phase- 1880- 1920
3) The female phase- 1920- present

5. The Feminine Phase- 1840-1880
• Entitled by Bronte sisters, George Eliot and Elizabeth
Gaskell
• the female writers have followed male’s norms
• some of them even write under male pseudonyms
like Charlotte Bronte as Currer, Emily Bronte as Ellis
George Eliot as Mary Ann Evans and Anne Bronte as
Acton Bell

6. The Feminist Phase (1880- 1920)
• Characterised by visions of perfect, female- lead
societies of the future
• period of separate utopia
• Includes the writings of Elizabethans like Robin
Francis, Trollope and others

7. The Female Phase- 1920- present
• There are writers like Rebecca west, Catherine
Mansfield and Dorothy Richardson
• they purely develop the idea of female writing and
female experience
• The differentiate female writing and male writing in
terms of languages