Female epic

articleissues
copyedit = August 2008
wikify = August 2008
essay = September 2008
Epic literature has historically been considered an exclusively male domain of literary productioncite book | last = Schweizer | first = Bernard | title = Approaches to the Anglo and American Female Epic, 1621-1982 | publisher = Ashgate | location = Aldershot | year = 2006 | isbn = 0754654869 ] . Many notable epics in literary history, from Homer's Iliad to Milton's "Paradise Lost", were authored by men. A growing number of revisionist literary scholars and womenclarifyme|date=September 2008|reason=What does this mean, that revisionist literary scholars as well as women have written such texts? have written texts which should be considered epics, as they have many of the required qualities: emphasis on heroism, nation building, religious authority, a strong quest motif, and a significant length. [cite book | last = Schweizer | first = Bernard | title = Rebecca West: Heroism, Rebellion, and the Female Epic | publisher = Greenwood Press | location = Westport | year = 2002 | isbn = 0313323607 | page = 3] Texts written by women which fulfill most or all of these criteria may not have been considered epics as few people thought to look for epic qualities in them. Part of this oversight has to do with timing; women writers began joining the writing profession in significant numbers after the renaissance, and thus any epic authored by a woman is by default a "modern epic", post-dating Milton’s Paradise Lost, which is the text that traditionalist critics consider the last authentic epic in the Western world. [cite book | last = Fowler | first = Alastair | title =Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes| page = 167 | publisher=Harvard University Press | year=1985 ]

Bernard Schweizer has published the onlyfact|date=September 2008 essay collection on the female epic to date, titled "Approaches to the Anglo and American Female Epic, 1621-1982" (2006), featuring, among others, chapters on Lady Mary Wroth’s "Urania", Mary Tighe’s "Psyche", Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s "Aurora Leigh", Sharon Doubiago’s "Hard Country", and Rebecca West’s "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon". Other books of literary criticism exploring the female epic include E. M. W. Tillyard's "The Epic Strain in the English Novel" (1958) [cite book | last = Tillyard | first = E. M. W. | title=The Epic Strain in the English Novel | year = 1958 | publisher = Chatto & Windus ] and Adeline Johns-Putra’s "Heroes and Housewifes: Women’s Epic Poetry and Domestic Ideology in the Romantic Age" (2001) [cite book | last = Johns-Putra | first = Adeline | title = Heroes and Housewives | publisher = P. Lang | location = Frankfurt Am Main | year = 2001 | isbn = 0820450766 ] .

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