Mary M. Talbot – лучшие книги

Part personal history, part biography, Dotter of Her Father's Eyes contrasts two coming-of-age narratives: that of Lucia, the daughter of James Joyce, and that of author Mary Talbot, daughter of the eminent Joycean scholar James S. Atherton. Social expectations and gender politics, thwarted ambitions and personal tragedy are played out against two contrasting historical backgrounds, poignantly evoked by the atmospheric visual storytelling of award winning comic artist and graphic novel pioneer Bryan Talbot. Produced through an intense collaboration seldom seen between writers and artists, Dotter of Her Father's Eyes is intelligent, funny and sad - a fine addition to the evolving genre of graphic memoir.

Set against the background of violence and state repression in a turbulent period of French history, The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia chronicles the incredible and outrageous life of Louise Michel, the revolutionary feminist dubbed ‘The Red Virgin of Montmartre’. A utopian dreamer, notorious anarchist, teacher, orator and poet, she was decades ahead of her time. Always a radical, she fought on the barricades defending the short-lived Paris Commune of 1871 against the reactionary regime that massacred thousands of French citizens after the Commune’s defeat. Deported to a penal colony on the other side of the Earth, she took up the cause of the indigenous population against French colonial oppression.
Celebrating the utopian urge in nineteenth-century literature and politics and the origins of science fiction, The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia is the third collaboration of best-selling academic and graphic novelist Mary M. Talbot with her husband, the graphic novel pioneer Bryan Talbot. Their first book together, Dotter of her Father’s Eyes, won the 2012 Costa Biography Award.

Women in industrialized societies have a lifelong relationship with consumerism. They are caught up in a ''consumer femininity'', since a feminine identity involves, among other things, a particular mode of consumption. This study, presented in full for the first time in this volume, aims to stimulate critical awareness of consumer femininity. It culminates in sample analysis of a type of discourse that contributes to the formation of women as feminine subjects: the teen magazine. The book proposes an approach to doing critical discourse analysis that focuses on the constitution of a language user''s subjectivity in the act of reading. Influenced by the early work of Norman Fairclough, it locates points of focus for taking up a critical (and specifically feminist) reading position in discourse analysis. In doing so, it seeks to provide theoretical and analytical grounding for a critical pedagogy that will take into the classroom attention to language and construction of language users'' subjectivities.

This is an up-to-date textbook in the growing area of language and gender. It will be popular with students for its accessibility and with teachers for the range and depth it achieves in a single volume. The book contains detailed discussion of work in the field, including recent research that has previously not been readily available to undergraduates or the general reader. A range of approaches is covered at an introductory level, presenting sometimes difficult and complex issues in an understandable way. Each chapter concludes with a list of recommended readings so that each topic can be taken further.

The emphasis is on recent research, with a preliminary grounding in early 'classic' studies in the field. Talbot examines the language used by women and men in a variety of speech situations and genres. For this, she draws on studies working within the Anglo-American tradition of research on language and gender. Issues and problems addressed include the difficulties arising from accounting for gender differences in terms of dichotomies like public vs private and informational vs affective - and, not least, the trouble with looking for 'differences' at all.

Another group of chapters present recent, critical perspectives on language and gender grounded in European theories of discourse and subjectivity, with particular attention to Critical Discourse Analysis. These chapters examine not gender difference but the construction of gender identities. They reflect both the high degree of interest in mass media and popular culture found in recent language and gender research and the preoccupation with discourse and social change that is central to Critical Discourse Analysis.


The book will become a key textbook for undergraduates and postgraduates in linguisitics, sociolinguistics, cultural and media studies, gender and women's studies and communication studies. The book is usable by students for whom it is their first, or only, contact with sociolinguistics.