Sara Maitland’s Revisionist Approach to Literary Tradition: Feminist and Ecocritical Perspective

Aleksandra Wisniewska; Roksana Zgierska

doi:10.18290/rh257311.9

Published : 2025-12-19

Vol. 73 No. 11 (2025)

Sara Maitland’s Revisionist Approach to Literary Tradition: Feminist and Ecocritical Perspective

Aleksandra Wisniewska

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3465-3635

Roksana Zgierska

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4496-7729

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rh257311.9

Abstract

Sara Maitland’s literary fiction engages deeply with the tradition of revisionist storytelling. Her short stories challenge and reconfigure biblical, mythological and folk literary tradition, voicing modern feminist and ecological concerns. The article explores how Maitland in some of her reworkings dismantles canonical literary forms and questions monolithic beliefs rooted in cultural identity. This revisionist process is analysed with particular focus on the use of fragmented and embodied narrative, subjectivity and moral ambivalence as well as foregrounding traditionally silent characters.

Keywords:

feminism, revisionist literature, literary canon, mythology, ecocriticism

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