From Word to Canvas Appropriations of Myth in Women's Aesthetic Production

From Word to Canvas: Appropriations of Myth in Womenâ (TM)s Aesthetic Production is an innovative collection of essays on female aesthetic production and myth, examining the ways in which women artists and writers utilize myth to negotiate their perceptions of feminine identity and feminine representation in an increasingly complex and culturally hybrid world. The featured essays and artistic contributions address a variety of contemporary female productions, including literature, performance, and visual art, in a markedly global scope. Representing a wide range of cultures, languages, geographic locales, and social contextsâ "from Jewish-Hindu and Kenyan-German, through Irish, Italian, American, to Vietnamese folktalesâ "this diversified selection underscores the agency of â oethe feminine gazeâ across a historical and geopolitical span, a gaze through which myths from various cultures and different cultural amalgams speak to us with force and with significance. The potency of this gaze is linked to the potential of myth simultaneously to encompass and compress history, and to offer the result as a backdrop against which the move from word to canvasâ "or from a mythic tale to its aesthetic appropriationâ "is performed in female aesthetic production.