A History of Women's Writing in France

A History of Women's Writing in France PDF Author: Sonya Stephens
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521581677
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
This volume was the first historical introduction to women's writing in France from the sixth century to the present day. Specially-commissioned essays by leading scholars provide an introduction in English to the wealth and diversity of French women writers, offering fascinating readings and perspectives. The volume as a whole offers a cohesive history of women's writing which has sometimes been obscured by the canonisation of a small feminine elite. Each chapter focuses on a given period and a range of writers, taking account of prevailing sexual ideologies and women's activities in, or their relation to, the social, political, economic and cultural surroundings. Complemented by an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary works and a biographical guide to more than one hundred and fifty women writers, it represents an invaluable resource for those wishing to discover or extend their knowledge of French literature written by women.

A History of Women's Writing in France

A History of Women's Writing in France PDF Author: Sonya Stephens
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521581677
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume was the first historical introduction to women's writing in France from the sixth century to the present day. Specially-commissioned essays by leading scholars provide an introduction in English to the wealth and diversity of French women writers, offering fascinating readings and perspectives. The volume as a whole offers a cohesive history of women's writing which has sometimes been obscured by the canonisation of a small feminine elite. Each chapter focuses on a given period and a range of writers, taking account of prevailing sexual ideologies and women's activities in, or their relation to, the social, political, economic and cultural surroundings. Complemented by an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary works and a biographical guide to more than one hundred and fifty women writers, it represents an invaluable resource for those wishing to discover or extend their knowledge of French literature written by women.

The Dynamics of Gender in Early Modern France

The Dynamics of Gender in Early Modern France PDF Author: Domna C. Stanton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317035119
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
In its six case studies, The Dynamics of Gender in Early Modern France works out a model for (early modern) gender, which is articulated in the introduction. The book comprises essays on the construction of women: three in texts by male and three by female writers, including Racine, Fénelon, Poulain de la Barre, in the first part; La Guette, La Fayette and Sévigné, in the second. These studies thus also take up different genres: satire, tragedy and treatise; memoir, novella and letter-writing. Since gender is a relational construct, each chapter considers as well specific textual and contextual representations of men. In every instance, Stanton looks for signs of conformity to-and deviations from-normative gender scripts. The Dynamics of Gender adds a new dimension to early modern French literary and cultural studies: it incorporates a dynamic (shifting) theory of gender, and it engages both contemporary critical theory and literary historical readings of primary texts and established concepts in the field. This book emphasizes the central importance of historical context and close reading from a feminist perspective, which it also interrogates as a practice. The Afterword examines some of the meanings of reading-as-a-feminist.

Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France

Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France PDF Author: Susan Broomhall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351872230
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Focusing on the vastly understudied area of how women participated in the book trades, not just as authors, but also as patrons, copyists, illuminators, publishers, editors and readers, Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France foregrounds contributions made by women during a period of profound transformation in the modes and understanding of publication. Broomhall asks whether women's experiences as authors changed when manuscript circulation gave way to the printed book as a standard form of publication. Innovatively, she broadens the concept of publication to include methods of scribal publication, through the circulation and presentation of manuscripts, and expands notions of authorship to incorporate a wide sample group of female writers and publishing experiences. She challenges the existing view that manuscript offered a "safe" means of semi-public exposure for female authors and explores its continuing presence after the introduction of print. The study introduces a wide and rich range of unexamined sources on early modern women, using an extensive range of manuscripts and the entire corpus of women's printed texts in sixteenth-century France. Most of the original texts, uncovered during the author's own extensive archival and bibliographical research, have never been re-published in modern French. Most of the citations from them are here translated into English for the first time. The work presents the only checklist of all known women's writings in printed texts, from prefaces and laudatory verse to editions of prose and poetry, between 1488 and 1599. Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France constitutes the most comprehensive assessment of women's contribution to contemporary publishing yet available. Broomhall's innovative approach and her conclusions have relevance not only for book historians and French historians, but for a broad range of scholars who work with other European literatures and histories, as well as women's studies.

The Hysteric's Revenge

The Hysteric's Revenge PDF Author: Rachel Mesch
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
ISBN: 9780826515315
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Brings into relief a critical relationship between the female mind and body that is essential to understanding the discursive position of the turn-of-the-century woman writer. This book includes novels that confront this mind/body problem through a wide variety of styles and genres that challenge conventional fin-de-siecle notions of femininity.

The Cambridge History of French Literature

The Cambridge History of French Literature PDF Author: William Burgwinkle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521897866
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 823

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Book Description
The most comprehensive history of literature written in French ever produced in English.

The Cambridge History of the Novel in French

The Cambridge History of the Novel in French PDF Author: Adam Watt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108758045
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 848

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Book Description
This History is the first in a century to trace the development and impact of the novel in French from its beginnings to the present. Leading specialists explore how novelists writing in French have responded to the diverse personal, economic, socio-political, cultural-artistic and environmental factors that shaped their worlds. From the novel's medieval precursors to the impact of the internet, the History provides fresh accounts of canonical and lesser-known authors, offering a global perspective beyond the national borders of 'the Hexagon' to explore France's colonial past and its legacies. Accessible chapters range widely, including the French novel in Sub-Saharan Africa, data analysis of the novel system in the seventeenth century, social critique in women's writing, Sade's banned works and more. Highlighting continuities and divergence between and within different periods, this lively volume offers routes through a diverse literary landscape while encouraging comparison and connection-making between writers, works and historical periods.

The Woman Question in France, 1400-1870

The Woman Question in France, 1400-1870 PDF Author: Karen Offen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107188083
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
A revolutionary reinterpretation of the French past, focused on contesting and defending masculine hierarchy in relations between women and men.

Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100

Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 PDF Author: Diane Watt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474270646
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Women's literary histories usually start in the later Middle Ages, but recent scholarship has shown that actually women were at the heart of the emergence of the English literary tradition. Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 focuses on the period before the so-called 'Barking Renaissance' of women's writing in the 12th century. By examining the surviving evidence of women's authorship, as well as the evidence of women's engagement with literary culture more widely, Diane Watt argues that early women's writing was often lost, suppressed, or deliberately destroyed. In particular she considers the different forms of male 'overwriting', to which she ascribes the multiple connotations of 'destruction', 'preservation', 'control' and 'suppression'. She uses the term to describe the complex relationship between male authors and their female subjects to capture the ways in which texts can attempt to control and circumscribe female autonomy. Written by one of the leading experts in medieval women's writing, Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 examines women's literary engagement in monasteries such as Ely, Whitby, Barking and Wilton Abbey, as well as letters and hagiographies from the 8th and 9th centuries. Diane Watt provides a much-needed look at women's writing in the early medieval period that is crucial to understanding women's literary history more broadly.

Uneasy Possessions

Uneasy Possessions PDF Author: Katharine Ann Jensen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781611490381
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In Uneasy Possessions: The Mother-Daughter Dilemma in French Women's Writings, 1671-1928, Katharine Ann Jensen analyzes the work of five major French women writers, discovering a four-century pattern of mother-daughter relationships marked by domination, submission, and conflict. This groundbreaking study explores work of Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette, Marie de S vign , Elisabeth Vig e Lebrun, George Sand, and Colette, providing a new reading of women's history and offering a new understanding of female psychology. Jensen argues that conflict between the mothers and daughters depicted in these texts was the result of two contradictory ideologies. In order to pass proper feminine behavior on to their daughters, mothers were encouraged to construe daughters as part of themselves, even as daughters were expected to adopt their mothers' wishes as their own. At the same time, a developing individualism created a conflict between the daughter's desire for autonomy and her mother's wish to be recognized for having raised a perfect daughter-alter ego. Despite vast changes in social organization in France over the four centuries of this study, the mother-daughter ideology remained effectively the same. To keep their daughters virgins, mothers were expected to form their daughters in their own image-as a mirror reflection. Mother-daughter reflectivity extended even into the marriage bed, as daughters were taught to remain faithful and to submit to (male) authority throughout their lives. Thus, the daughter's sexuality was channeled into producing legitimate offspring while the mother's ambition was confined to working on her daughter, rather than focused on creating cultural works that might compete with men's. Mothers were rewarded with the narcissistic satisfaction of viewing their filial creations as a socially sanctioned work of art: daughters thus functioned as possessions.

Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales

Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales PDF Author: Bronwyn Reddan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496223934
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Love is a key ingredient in the stereotypical fairy-tale ending in which everyone lives happily ever after. This romantic formula continues to influence contemporary ideas about love and marriage, but it ignores the history of love as an emotion that shapes and is shaped by hierarchies of power including gender, class, education, and social status. This interdisciplinary study questions the idealization of love as the ultimate happy ending by showing how the conteuses, the women writers who dominated the first French fairy-tale vogue in the 1690s, used the fairy-tale genre to critique the power dynamics of courtship and marriage. Their tales do not sit comfortably in the fairy-tale canon as they explore the good, the bad, and the ugly effects of love and marriage on the lives of their heroines. Bronwyn Reddan argues that the conteuses' scripts for love emphasize the importance of gender in determining the "right" way to love in seventeenth-century France. Their version of fairy-tale love is historical and contingent rather than universal and timeless. This conversation about love compels revision of the happily-ever-after narrative and offers incisive commentary on the gendered scripts for the performance of love in courtship and marriage in seventeenth-century France.