The Menstrual Imaginary in Literature: Notes on a Wild Fluidity (Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender)

This book draws on literary, cultural, and critical examples forming a menstrual imaginary―a body of work by women writers and poets that builds up a concept of women’s creativity in an effort to overturn menstrual prejudice. The text addresses key arbiters of the menstrual imaginary in a series of letters, including Sylvia Plath the initiator of ‘the blood jet’, Hélène Cixous the pioneer of a conceptual red ink and the volcanic unconscious, and Luce Irigaray the inaugurator of women’s artistic process relative to a vital flow of desire based in sexual difference. The text also undertakes provocative against-the-grain re-readings of the Medusa, the Sphinx, Little Red Riding Hood, and The Red Shoes, as a means of affirmatively and poetically re-imagining a woman’s flow. Natalie Rose Dyer argues for re-envisioning menstrual bleeding and creativity in reaction and resistance to ongoing andproblematic societal views of menstruation.

Natalie Rose Dyer teaches creative writing and literary studies at Deakin University, Australia. Her poetry and essays appear in literary journals such as Meanjin Quarterly, Australian Poetry, Cordite Poetry Review, Mascara Literary Review, The University of Canberra Vice-chancellors International Poetry Prize Anthologies, The Chiron Review, The Wisconsin Review, and more.