Blackwell Reference Online

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(1975–77) An informal network of women students and teachers in adult and higher education, which met regularly in London from 1975 to late 1977. The MFLC was a reading group focusing on classic Marxist writings on literature as well as the new French theories (often distributed freshly translated, in typescript, to members): from Marx, Saussure, and Macherey to Lacan, Kristeva, and Irigaray. For the Sociology of Literature Conference at the University of Essex in 1977 the collective wrote a collaborative paper entitled “Women's Writing: Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, Aurora Leigh” and read it, polyphonically, in a line of nine women across the lecture room. The paper has been reprinted and cited frequently, and is seen as a key document in early British socialist-feminist L iterary criticism . The collective met for a short time after the Essex Conference; its members have since stayed in contact and have gone on to publish F eminist criticism in Britain and the United States. See also F eminist criticism . 1986 : “ The feminist politics of literary theory ”. ... log in or subscribe to read full text