FORM IS THE ULTIMATE GIFT’: SHOWALTER'S LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL MODEL OF GYNOCRITICISM IN ADRIENNE RICH'S A CHANGE OF WORLD
FORM IS THE ULTIMATE GIFT’: SHOWALTER'S LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL MODEL OF GYNOCRITICISM IN ADRIENNE RICH'S A CHANGE OF WORLD

Summary/Abstract: Adrienne Rich starts her poetic career as a female poet following the established masculine linguistics and modes of writing, leading her to repress her real feelings and experiences as a woman. But through such a submissive craft, Rich creates a double-voiced discourse which furtively gives voice to her nonconforming feminist ideas. Rich employs masculine linguistics and aesthetics as a defense mechanism to keep herself from the threat of patriarchal criticism but beyond this masquerade she articulates her rebellious ideas which she was not prepared to utter consciously at the time. This paper, combining Showalter's linguistic and cultural model of gynocriticism which covers such tendencies in female writing, aims at finding networks of influence working in Rich's early poetry especially in A Change of World.

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