In this rewarding book, Laurie A. Finke challenges assumptions about gender, the self, and the text which underlie fundamental constructs of contemporary feminist theory. She maintains that some of the key concepts structuring feminist literary criticism need to be reexamined within both their historical context and the larger framework of current theory concerning language, representation, subjectivity, and value.

Laurie A. Finke is Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Kenyon College. She is the coeditor of Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers, also from Cornell University Press, author of Women's Writing in English: The Middle Ages, and coauthor of King Arthur and the Myth of History.