Background
Stout, Janis Pitts was born on May 4, 1939 in Fort Worth, Texas, United States. Daughter of Kenneth C. and Helean B. (Minshew) Pitts.
(This work examines the unspoken in the work of four women...)
This work examines the unspoken in the work of four women writers - Jane Austen, Willa Cather, Katherine Anne Porter, and Joan Didion - as a consciously employed feminist rhetoric. Acknowledging that reticence is often enforced by patriarchal silencing of women. Stout argues that each of these writers turns that traditional limitation into a weapon of mockery of assault against masculine society. She shows a continuity extending from Austen to the other writers and explores differences in their use of a rhetoric of reticence. Austen, the fountainhead of the strategically reticent style in the novel, used irony to criticize covertly her society's treatment of women while seeming to observe its constraints. Cather, motivated both by her personal need for disguise and by her commitments to a Jamesian aesthetic of indirection, also developed techniques for conveying more than she actually said, persuading readers of gender injustice. Porter employed an Austenian style of clarifiction and a rhetoric of discretion, but her indignation at the anguish of women's lives is apparent. Didion's writing is terse, stripped, and intensely, angrily aggresive. All four writers avoid anti-patriarchal oratory, instead working subversively to question and at times to assault power structures based on gender. Stout points to the necessity of reading women's fiction in both an aesthetic and a social context in order to catch the elusive undertones of their style and also the need to recognize the common concerns of women writers from different national literatures.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813912628/?tag=2022091-20
( Stout identifies five basic, recurring patterns of the ...)
Stout identifies five basic, recurring patterns of the journey narrative: exploration and escape; homeseeking; return; heroic quest; and wandering. Discussion of these patterns is based on considerations such as the direction of the journey, its motivation, and reference to historical precedents. Stout considers works that demonstrate the complex and interwoven patterns of the journey narrative. The more complex the work, the more intricately interwoven these patterns are. To illustrate the all-inclusiveness of the journey motif in American literature Stout pursues the theme into the realm of poetry and relates the fictional journey narrative to the American historical experience.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0313232350/?tag=2022091-20
(Katherine Anne Porter's life (1890-1980) closely parallel...)
Katherine Anne Porter's life (1890-1980) closely parallelled that of her century, not only in its span but in its interests and contradictions. She was a Communist sympathiser who later became quasi-fascist, a cosmopolitan who embraced Southern agrarianism, a femme fatale and a feminist.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813915686/?tag=2022091-20
Stout, Janis Pitts was born on May 4, 1939 in Fort Worth, Texas, United States. Daughter of Kenneth C. and Helean B. (Minshew) Pitts.
Bachelor, Lamar St. University, 1966. Master of Arts, Lamar St. University, 1968. Doctor of Philosophy, Rice University, 1973.
Director graduate programs, Rice U., Houston, 1977-1987; associate dean liberal arts, Texas Agricultural and Mechanical U, College Station, 1987-1994; English professor, Texas Agricultural and Mechanical U, College Station, 1987^., since 1987.
(This work examines the unspoken in the work of four women...)
( Stout identifies five basic, recurring patterns of the ...)
(Katherine Anne Porter's life (1890-1980) closely parallel...)
Member: Modern Language Assn, Western Literature Association, Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Katherine Anne Porter Society (secretary since 1994), Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association, Phi Kappa Phi.
Married Bob J. Stout, August 27, 1956 (divorced August, 1981). Children: Douglas C., Alan K., Richard K., Steven C. Married Loren D. Lutes, May 15, 1982.
Stepchildren: L. Daniel, David J., Laura Lutes Gomez, Rebekah Lutes Thomas.