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Illa

MARTINE MOTARD-NOAR (ESSAY DATE 1994)

SOURCE: Motard-Noar, Martine. “From Persephone to Demeter: A Feminist Experience in Cixous’s Fiction.” In Images of Persephone: Feminist Readings in Western Literature, edited by Elizabeth T. Hayes, pp. 153-69. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994.

In the following essay, Motard-Noar studies Cixous’s reclaiming of history and myths in her novel Illa through the deconstruction of male-based myths that relegate women to roles of passivity.

Hélène Cixous is one of the most controversial thinkers and writers in France. Despite her unwillingness to be labeled a “feminist”—a reductive categorization, according to her, just another “ism”-ending word¹—she is considered a representative of one of the major creative and critical drives in the New French Feminist movement....

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Primary Sources
   1. HéLèNe Cixous (Essay Date 1975)
4. General Commentary
   1. Verena Andermatt Conley (Essay Date 1984)
   2. Morag Shiach (Essay Date 1991)
5. Title Commentary
   1. "The Laugh of the Medusa"
   2. Illa
6. Further Reading
7. Copyright

1. Feminism