ABSTRACT
Adrienne Munich argues that the male-authored works of the literary canon are properly as much the object of feminist criticism as is women’s writing. Turning to the traditional reading of Genesis as a myth of male dominance – in particular, dominance by means of language – she shows how tropes of male authority serve to deny the presence and power of women. In a feminist reading of an episode from Don Quixote, she deconstructs the ways in which literature mythologizes woman and man’s desire for woman. Finally, she suggests that critical discourse, in defending against texts which don’t wholly substantiate patriarchal definitions of gender, is often more misogynistic than the texts themselves.
