Özet:

The purpose of feminist criticism is to object patriarchal assumptions about women and to respond to the masculine determination of what is feminine. To begin with, feminist literary criticism tries to describe and analyze woman’ s social, economic, political and psychological condition within literary texts and literary canon.  In addition to interpreting masculine discourse, feminist criticism aims to resist and challenge the dogmas apparent in male dominant doctrines. It can be said that feminist criticism has a wide range of meaning including the attitudes to literature as well as culture in the sense of the interest in women. Feminist criticism can be identified as the quest for equality among sexes and an attack against the claim that womanhood is a secondary and even an inferior situation. Although the particular word ‘feminism’ was first used in 1890 by French philosopher Charles Fourier,  women’s resistance to patriarchy and clergy goes back to Middle Ages which often portrayed women as Eve, a seductress who caused the fall of humankind and denounced women for constantly attempting to distract men from the way of God. As such, in the present paper, I would like to bring an approach to the early roots of misogyny, a brief history Feminist Criticism and finally comment on Nina Baym’ s article The Madwoman and Her Languages.

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