Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French
- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Conventions
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Beginnings: From the Late Medieval to Madame de Lafayette
- 1 Late Medieval Precursors to the Novel: ‘aucune chose de nouvel’
- 2 Cultural Transmission and the Early French Novel
- 3 The Rise of the Novel in Sixteenth-Century France?
- 4 The Evolution of the Novel System in the Long Seventeenth Century
- 5 Seventeenth-Century French Women Writers and the Novel: A Challenge to Literary History
- 6 Madame de Lafayette and La Princesse de Clèves as Landmark
- Part II The Eighteenth Century: Learning, Letters, Libertinage
- Part III After the Revolution: The Novel in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Part IV From Naturalism to the Nouveau Roman
- Part V Fictions of the Fifth Republic: From de Gaulle to the Internet Age
- Index
- References
5 - Seventeenth-Century French Women Writers and the Novel: A Challenge to Literary History
from Part I - Beginnings: From the Late Medieval to Madame de Lafayette
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2021
Edited by
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French
- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Conventions
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Beginnings: From the Late Medieval to Madame de Lafayette
- 1 Late Medieval Precursors to the Novel: ‘aucune chose de nouvel’
- 2 Cultural Transmission and the Early French Novel
- 3 The Rise of the Novel in Sixteenth-Century France?
- 4 The Evolution of the Novel System in the Long Seventeenth Century
- 5 Seventeenth-Century French Women Writers and the Novel: A Challenge to Literary History
- 6 Madame de Lafayette and La Princesse de Clèves as Landmark
- Part II The Eighteenth Century: Learning, Letters, Libertinage
- Part III After the Revolution: The Novel in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Part IV From Naturalism to the Nouveau Roman
- Part V Fictions of the Fifth Republic: From de Gaulle to the Internet Age
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter challenges the standard narrative associated with the woman writer and the rise of the novel according to which an antisocial woman requires a separate, private space to create works that she delivers to the world anonymously, if she dares to publish them at all. When we return to seventeenth-century France, the period when the novel first came into its own, we discover a history of the genre, its practitioners and its consumers that upends this reductionist and stereotypical history. In France the novel arises out of a culture of collaboration and conversation, where women played a pivotal and determining role. Women influenced the novel form itself in addition to adding their own texts. The chapter presents the argument that collaboration and conversation, which were the hallmarks of a unique salon culture created and dominated by women, were at the heart of the genesis of the novel and influenced and shaped France’s Republic of Letters as whole. An examination of these particular characteristics illuminates the particular form the novel took in France, the influence women exerted on the novel, and why it was their creative genre of choice.
Keywords
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French , pp. 95 - 112Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021
References
Further Reading
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Beasley, Faith E., Revising Memory: Women’s Fiction and Memoirs in Seventeenth-Century France (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990)Google Scholar
Beasley, Faith E., Salons, History, and the Creation of Seventeenth-Century France: Mastering Memory (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006)Google Scholar
Beasley, Faith E., Teaching Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century French Women Writers (New York: MLA, 2011)Google Scholar
Beasley, Faith E., Versailles Meets the Taj Mahal: François Bernier, Marguerite de la Sablière and Enlightening Conversations in Seventeenth-Century France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chartier, Roger, ‘Loisir et sociabilité: lire à haute voix dans l’Europe moderne’, Littératures classiques, 12 (1990), 127–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeJean, Joan, Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991)Google Scholar
Gilbert, Sandra M. and Gubar, Susan, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979)Google Scholar
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