Introduction
Ellen Moers (1928–1978) was an American academic and literary scholar.
She is best known for her pioneering contribution to gynocriticism, Literary Women (1976).
Feminist breakthrough
After two exact, but conventional books (on the dandy and on Theodore Dreiser), Moers was caught up by Second-wave feminism, which she credits with “pulling me out of the stacks” and thereby ultimately withproducing Literary Women.In the latter she established the existence of a strong nineteenth-century tradition of (international) women writers - her identification within it of the role of what she called 'female Gothic' proving especially influential.
In the fast-moving (and not uncompetitive) world of feminist scholarship, her book would be challenged in the following decade as undertheorised and ethnocentric; but continued nonetheless to serve as a significant stepping-stone for future scholarship.
Twin traditions
As well as highlighting the role of the female dandy, Moers had pointed to the ambiguous origins of the type, in a merger of French and English traditions; as well as to the paradox in the dandy's highly structured pose of inaction.
Similarly with Dreiser she had indicated his twin role on the cusp between 19C realism and 20C realism, as well as his roots in two very different religious traditions, Catholic and Protestant.