Katharine M. Rogers – författare

Katharine Rogers argues that of all the achieving women of the 18th century whose work has been recovered from obscurity, Frances Burney was the most inhibited by traditional concepts of femininity. Yet her life, her journals, and her novels sometimes point to a strength and creative vitality that existed side by side with timidity and stultifying conventionality. Professor Rogers confronts more traditional views of Burney, which emphasize her conservatism, while engaging with recent feminist criticism, which emphasizes Burney's courage and shows her novels to be serious representations of the difficulties of women's lives. Contents: Introduction; Evelina: or, The History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World; Cecilia: A More Probing Look Into That World; Camilla: Family Relationships Complicating Entrance into the World; Protest Against the World's Law; The Wanderer: A Political Analysis of the World; Conclusion: Tensions Between Form and Content; Notes; Works Cited.

The Cat and the Human Imagination is a fascinating historical survey of the changing cultural attitudes towards cats and the myriad ways that they have been depicted in literature and art. Feline images have permeated civilization since the time of the ancient Egyptians, and during this time the status of the cat has changed dramatically. The book examines the changing images-- fertility goddess, sly little predator, agent of Satan, avenging witness, aristocrat, friend, spirit of the home, bloodthirsty killer, seductive female--and relates them to the contexts in which they arose. It also analyzes how human attitudes towards cats seem to have evolved in parallel with attitudes towards animals, towards authority, and towards gender.Western literature and visual art have reflected this change, developing from bare sketches to richly varied expressions of feline personality and human interaction with cats. Katharine M. Rogers seeks out the cats who make appearances in an impressive range of literary and artistic works, providing the first critical look at the symbolic functioning of cat characters in Poe's "The Black Cat," Dickens's Bleak House, and Zola's Therese Raquin, among other literary works. The historical and artistic range covered is impressive, creating a rich compendium that is the ideal book for the cat lover seeking a refreshingly substantial and scholarly work about this fascinating animal."This book is a classic-- something every cat-loving intellectual will have to own. (No one, of course, ever really owns a cat--but everyone should own this book.) It's the kind of book you want to quote from at the vet's, or cocktail parties, or whenever you get the urge to convert a dog lover to the true faith." --Emily Toth, Louisiana State UniversityKatharine M. Rogers is Professor Emerita of English, City University of New York. Her previous books include Feminism in Eighteenth-Century England and Frances Burney: The World of "Female Difficulties."