Gynocriticism is a literary theory that aims to study women's writing as a distinct tradition, separate from male-authored works. It was coined by American feminist literary critic Elaine Showalter in the 1970s.
The goals of gynocriticism include:
Recovering lost writers
Identifying and studying women writers who have been marginalized or excluded from the literary canon
Understanding women's writing
Analyzing the unique qualities and concerns of women's writing, including imagery, themes, and genres
Creating new models
Developing new models based on women's experiences to replace male models of literary creation
Giving women's writing its own space
Studying women's literature on its own terms, rather than comparing it to male-authored works
Some examples of gynocritical works include:
The Female Imagination by Patricia Meyer Spacks (1975)
Literary Women by Ellen Moers (1976)
A Literature of Their Own by Elaine Showalter (1977)
The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (1979)
