| Ellen Moers | |
| Birth Date: | 1928 |
| Death Date: | 1979 |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | literary critic |
| Known For: | gynocriticism |
| Notable Works: | Literary Women (1976) |
Ellen Moers (1928–1979) was an American academic and literary scholar. She is best known for her pioneering contribution to gynocriticism, Literary Women (1976).[1]
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"[2] and leading her to write Literary Women. In the latter she established the existence of a strong nineteenth-century tradition of (international) women writers—her identification within it of what she called 'female Gothic' proving especially influential.[3]
In the fast-moving world of feminist scholarship, her book would be challenged in the following decade as under-theorised and ethnocentric; but continued nonetheless to serve as a significant stepping-stone for future scholarship.[4]
Moers pointed to the ambiguous origins of the dandy, in a merger of French and English traditions;[5] to the paradox in the dandy's highly structured pose of inaction; and to the role of the female dandy.[6]
She indicated Dreiser's twin role on the cusp between 19th-century realism and 20th-century realism, as well as his roots in the different religious traditions of Catholicism and Protestantism.[7]