Feminist literary history /

Not, as the title might suggest, a feminist history of literature, Janet Todd's new book is instead an account of the debate between Anglo-American and French literary feminism over the past two decades. Coming down firmly against psychoanalytic theory and in favor of gynocritics (the American feminist project of uncovering and studying women's texts that had been obscured by traditional literary history), Todd summarizes and critiques the positions of leading feminists in both camps. Although her critiques often amount to descriptions of how projects such as Elaine Showalter's, Gilbert and Gubar's, or Alice Jardine's would be different if Todd herself had done them (e.g., they would pay more attention to women writers predating Jane Austen, whom Todd is partly responsible for rediscovering), her comprehensive survey of feminist critics and their various assumptions would be an excellent guide for newcomers to feminism bewildered by the diversity and numerousness of the critical and theoretical works represented in Todd's excellent bibliography. While it makes no original contribution other than to elucidate Todd's own position, the book's polemical narrative of academic feminism should serve as a new point of departure for the continuing debate among its practitioners. Levels: graduate and upper-division undergraudate. R. R. Warhol University of Vermont