Title: Feminist Literary Criticism Defined
Headings: Feminist Literary Criticism
Feminist Literary Criticism
Feminism Definition
Critical Methodology
Embodying or Undercutting Stereotypes
Tools of the Feminist Literary Critic
Gynocriticism
Resources and Further Reading
Watch Now: 9 Feminist Vocabulary Terms You Should Know

Content: Feminist literary criticism has since intertwined with postmodernism and increasingly complex questions of gender and societal roles. Tools of the Feminist Literary Critic
Feminist literary criticism may bring in tools from other critical disciplines, such as historical analysis, psychology, linguistics, sociological analysis, and economic analysis. Feminist criticism may also look at intersectionality, looking at how factors including race, sexuality, physical ability, and class are also involved. Feminist literary criticism may use any of the following methods: Deconstructing the way that women characters are described in novels, stories, plays, biographies, and histories, especially if the author is male
Deconstructing how one's own gender influences how one reads and interprets a text, and which characters and how the reader identifies depending on the reader's gender
Deconstructing how women autobiographers and biographers of women treat their subjects, and how biographers treat women who are secondary to the main subject
Describing relationships between the literary text and ideas about power and sexuality and gender
Critique of patriarchal or woman-marginalizing language, such as a "universal" use of the masculine pronouns "he" and "him"
Noticing and unpacking differences in how men and women write: a style, for instance, where women use more reflexive language and men use more direct language (example: " she let herself in" versus "he opened the door")
Reclaiming women writers who are little known or have been marginalized or undervalued, sometimes referred to as expanding or criticizing the canon—the usual list of "important" authors and works (Examples include raising up the contributions of early playwright ​ Aphra Behn and showing how she was treated differently than male writers from her own time forward, and the retrieval of Zora Neale Hurston 's writing by Alice Walker .) Reclaiming the "female voice" as a valuable contribution to literature, even if formerly marginalized or ignored
Analyzing multiple works in a genre as an overview of a feminist approach to that genre: for example, science fiction or detective fiction
Analyzing multiple works by a single author (often female)
Examining how relationships between men and women and those assuming male and female roles are depicted in the text, including power relations
Examining the text to find ways in which patriarchy is resisted or could have been resisted
Feminist literary criticism is distinguished from gynocriticism because feminist literary criticism may also analyze and deconstruct literary works of men. Gynocriticism
Gynocriticism, or gynocritics, refers to the literary study of women as writers.