Bibliography on the Female Hero

EK Sparks
Clemson University
September 2000

An Intro Bibliography on

The Female Hero

Abel, Elizabeth, Marianne Hirsch, and Elizabeth Langland, eds. The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development. Hanover NH: UP of New England, 1983.
Christ, Carol, Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest. Boston: Beacon Press, 1980.

Somewhat Jungian study of patterns of spiritual development in novels and poetry by Chopin, Atwood, Lessing, Rich, Shange.

Coffin, Tristram Potter. The Female Hero in Folklore and Legend. New York: Seabury, 1975.

DuPlessis, Rachael Blau. "Psyche or Wholeness." The Massachusetts Review 20 (1979): 77-96.

Edwards, Lee R. Psyche as Hero: Female Heroism and Fictional Form. Middleton Conneticut: Wesleyan UP, 1984.

---. "The Labors of Psyche: Towards A Theory of Female Heroism." Critical Inquiry 6.1 (Fall 1979): 33-49. Rev. as Chapter 1 of Psyche as Hero

Franz, Marie Louise von. Problems of the Feminine in Fairy Tales. ( Zurich: Spring Publications, 1972.

Goldenberg, Naomi. "A Feminist Critique of Jung. Signs 2.2 (1976): 443-9.

---. "Archetypal Theory After Jung." Spring: An Annual of Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Thought (1975): 199-220.
---. Returning Words to Flesh: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Resurrection of the Body. Boston, Beacon Press, 1990.
Humm, Maggie. Chapter 5, "Myth Criticism." In Feminist Criticism: Women as Contemporary Critics.
Johnson, Robert A. She: Understanding Feminine Psychology. New York: Harper and Row, Perennial Library, 1977.
Knapp, Bettina L. Women in Twentieth-Century Literature: A Jungian View. .penn 1987.
Lauter, Estella. Women as Mythmakers: Poetry and Visual Art by Twentieth Century Women. .iu 1984. See especially chapter on Varo.
*Lauter, Estella and Carol Schreier Rupprecht, eds. Feminist Archetypal Theory: Interdisciplinary Re-Visions of Jungian Thought. .tenn 1985. See especially the Introduction and the Last chapter, "Feminist Archetypal Theory: A Proposal" for sophisticated evaluation of the utility and limitations of Jungian thought for feminists.
---. "Visual Images by Women: A Test Case for the Theory of Archetypes." 46-92. In Feminist Archetypal Theory, ed. Lauter and Rupprecht.
*Pearson, Carol and Katherine Pope. The Female Hero in American and British Literature. New York: R.R. Bowler Co., 1981. A female-oriented version of Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces which chronicles the archetypal patterns of the female quest in literature; references to an immense variety of canonical and non-canonical texts -- very rich and enjoyable.
Pearson, Carol S. The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By. New York: Harper and Row, 1986.
Pratt, Annis. "Spinning Among Fields: Jung, Frye, Levi-Strauss, and Feminist Archetypal Theory." In Feminist Archetypal Theory, ed. Lauter and Schreier (1985): 93-136.
Pratt, Annis with Andrea Lowenstein, and Andrea Wyer. Archetypal Patterns in Women's Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981.
Wehr, Demaris. "Religious and Social Dimensions of Jung's Concept of the Archetype: A Feminist Perspective." 23-45. In Feminist Archetypal Theory. Ed. Lauter and Rupprecht.
Weigle, W. Spiders and Spinsters: Women and Mythology. Albuguergue: U of New Mexico P, 1982.