Deconstructing gender stereotypes in Western tradition: no more Miss Perfect

Abstract

"Traditional feminine description and roles within Western literary and artistic cultural artifacts have tended to portray women in very a specific way - one which creates, disseminates and consolidates the gender roles which became foundational to heteropatriarchy and, sometimes, male chauvinism. As an example, women in poetry are often portrayed as fragile, sweet, romanticized creatures who ignite masculine desire or bolster male artists' creativity. In this sense, most Western lyrical traditions present women as either objects of desire or inspirational muses. These secondary roles, which transform women into subalterns, can also be seen in other artistic manifestations, such as painting and sculpture or, more recently, films, TV fictions, graphic novels and videogames. This volume offers a multidisciplinary approach to the topic of feminine representation in literature and the arts, presenting womanhood from new perspectives which highlight feminine characters who have traditionally been neglected, misrepresented or reduced to marginal roles."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents

Introduction / Maria Luisa Calero Vaquera -- “The giant wistaria” : a study of the female American gothic in the nineteenth century / Paula Chaves Garcia -- “Eat me, drink me, love me” : re-presenting the sexual in Christina Rossetti's “Goblin Market” in illustration / Esther Díaz Morillo -- An approach to Senegalese “Art Culinaire” and its translation in the work of Aminata sow fall / Manual Gómez Campos -- From housewives to secretaries of state : how “The Seven Sisters” enables women to transcend domesticity / Marta Rojano Simón -- And history would call me Chingada : Chicano women poets and the La Malinche myth / Javier Martín Párraga -- Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler : translation from an interdisciplinary perspective / Anna Motisi -- Margarita Landi, charismatic reporter for El Caso : prototype of the female comic Mary Noticias / María José Ramos Rovi -- Agnés Varda's career : fostering women's freedom / María Dolores García Ramos -- Apparent transgression in the female universe of Dopesick / Ana Melendo -- New princesses, witches and heroines through an audio-visual graphic narrative : educating citizens in values “In Feminine” / Belén Calderón Roca -- “Pop singer kinds of girls” : female references for a young postfeminist generation / Laura Triviño-Cabrera -- The woman that one must be : female archetypes versus reality in anarchism during the Spanish Civil War as portrayed through visual propaganda / Noelia Ojeda Muñoz -- Beyond gender : Himeyuri, or the Battle Girls of Okinawa / Marina Eva Cabezas Morales -- Spanish women in military history / Alicia Vallina Vallina -- Demystifying patriarchal models in poetry written by women in the late twentieth century / Maria Rosal Nadales -- Women and crime : the image of women in the texts of Spanish judicial sentences at the beginning of the twentieth century / Raul Ramirez Ruiz.