Deviant women : cultural, linguistic and literary approaches to narratives of femininity

This multidisciplinary collection of articles illuminates the ways in which the concept of female deviance is represented, appropriated, re-inscribed and refigured in a wide range of texts across time, cultures and genres. Such a choice of variety shows that representations of deviance accommodate meaning-making spaces and possibilities for resistance in different socio-cultural and literary contexts. The construct of the deviant woman is analysed from literary, sociolinguistic and historical-cultural perspectives, revealing insights about cultures and societies. Furthermore, the studies recognise and explain the significance of the concept of deviance in relation to gender that bespeaks a contemporary cultural concern about narratives of femininity. Anna Foka: Beyond Deviant: Theodora as the Other in Byzantine Imperial Historiography - Wang Lei: Ghosts and Spirits as the objet a in Pu Songling's Strange Tales from Make-Do Studio - Sanna Karkulehto/Ilmari Leppihalme: Deviant Will to Knowledge: The Pandora Myth and Its Feminist Revisions - Tiina Mantymaki: Carnivalesque Masquerade. Lisbeth Salander and Her Trickster Agency - Marinella Rodi-Risberg: Trauma and Contextual Factors in Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees: Incest, Race and Gendered Subjectivities - Caroline Enberg: "Baby Killer!" - Media Constructions of a Culturally Congruent Identity for Casey Anthony as Mother and Female Offender - Maj-Britt Hoeglund: The Absent Female Rotarian in Finland: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Rotary Norden - Anka Ryall: A Deviant in the Arctic - Gerald Porter: "Foremost in Violence and Ferocity": Women Singing at Work in Britain - Roisin Ni Ghalloglaigh/Sandra Joyce: "Threshing in the Haggard to her Heart's Delight": Women and Erotic Expression in Irish Traditional Song. This collection of articles illuminates the ways in which the concept of female deviance is represented, re-inscribed and refigured in a wide range of texts across time, cultures and genres. The choice of variety shows that representations of deviance accommodate meaning-making spaces and possibilities for resistance in different socio-cultural and literary contexts. The construct of the deviant woman is analysed from literary, sociolinguistic and historical-cultural perspectives, revealing insights about cultures and societies. Furthermore, the studies recognise and explain the significance of the concept of deviance in relation to gender that bespeaks a contemporary cultural concern about narratives of femininity This volume explores the representation of female deviance from literary, sociolinguistic and historical-cultural perspectives in a wide range of texts across time, cultures and genres. In this way, it elucidates a contemporary cultural concern about narratives of femininity as well as diverse sites of negotiations of female resistance. Tiina Mäntymäki, Marinella Rodi-risberg, Anna Foka (eds.). Includes Bibliographical References And Index.