French and Francophone Literature Commons^™

Imperial Performativity: The Life, Transgressions, And Writings Of Isabelle Eberhardt Under The Lens Of Queer Theory, Kelsey Deforest

Undergraduate Research Awards

An examination of Isabelle Eberhardt's life and writings with regard to gender norms and imperialist expectations in French-controlled Algeria. The PDF includes the author's entry submission essay for the 2011 Undergraduate Research Awards.

Cixous, Hélène, Abigail Rine

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "Hélène Cixous is a highly prolific Francophone theorist, poet, novelist, playwright, philosopher, and literary critic: indeed, she is a writer whose work resists easy categorization. Although the majority of her publications are works of experimental fiction, she is most widely known in the English-speaking world for her contributions to French feminist and literary theory and for formulating the concept of écriture feminine, or feminine writing."

Wittig, Monique, Abigail Rine

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "Monique Wittig was a novelist, theorist, and feminist activist, known primarily for her fictional works and theorization of feminism from a materialist, lesbian perspective. Wittig was a central figure in the feminist movement in France, and her writings on heterosexuality and the oppression of women have greatly influenced feminist thought and queer theory."

Inequities Of Contemporary French Women, Olivia Kuhlman

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis is an analysis of the current situation of women in contemporary France. It analyzes the current situation of French women in education, the work force, politics, and French society, with the intent of uncovering the gender inequalities French women encounter in contemporary France.

Marie Cardinal: New Perspectives (Book Review), Claire Marrone

Languages Faculty Publications

Book review by Claire Marrone.

Webb, Emma, ed. Marie Cardinal: New Perspectives. Bern, Switzerland; New York: Peter Lang, 2006. ISBN 9783039105442

From The Cloister To The World: Mainstreaming Early Modern French Convent Writing: An État Présent, Thomas M. Carr

French Language and Literature Papers

The article is an overview on recent scholarship dealing Ancien Régime convent writing. Although nuns constitute a large percentage of the seventeenth-century women authors whose writings were published, except for a few figures like Marie de l’Incarnation Guyart or the Port-Royal nuns, their texts have been largely ignored, even by scholars engaged in the retrieval of women’s writing during the period. This is in contrast to Italian and Hispanic studies, where the contribution of convent writing is acknowledged as central. The état present discusses reasons for this neglect, the methodological challenges and perspectives for further research, along with a 120 …

A Checklist Of Published Writings In French By Early Modern Nuns, Thomas M. Carr

French Language and Literature Papers

The great amount of writing by early modern nuns that was published during the Ancien Régime is underexploited because no master list of it exists. For example, at least ninety books by some sixty different nuns were published between 1600 and 1700, and many more that have been published since. The Checklist of over 300 items is an effort to fill this gap. Besides books authored by nuns, it includes many biographies that contain samples of their writings. Short occasional texts, such as death notices, lettres circulaires, and legal factums have generally been excluded, however. Unless another location is noted, …

The Fetish In/As Text: Retif De La Bretonne And The Development Of Modern Sexual Science And French Literary Studies, 1887-1934, Amy S. Wyngaard

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

This essay examines the role of Rétif's writings in the development of the concept of erotic fetishism and in the formation of the French literary canon in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rétif explored foot and shoe fetishisms more than a century before the phenomena were medically recognized, anticipating the modern psychosexual use of the term fetishism and making important contributions to the invention of the theoretical concept. Rétif's works were accorded a privileged place in early pathologies of fetishism, which provoked a series of polemics among German and French medical doctors and literary scholars centered …

Burn The Panopticon: Irigaray's Ethics, Difference, Poetics, Simone Roberts

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph of Prologue]

The following essay has a purpose more than a thesis. This essay explains the central tenets of Irigaray's ethics of sexual difference through an understanding her work as that of a symbolist philosopher. Symbolist poetry and French Feminist philosophy like Irigaray's have several qualities in common. One is that the literal level of language is not where the action is. A reader must think associatively on many levels at once in order to gather and interpret the several indirect messages sent by a particular image or metaphor. Another is an acquired comfort with paradox. Paradoxes lie …

Uncovering The Connections Between The Concepts Of Language, Sexual Difference And The Divine In The Work Of Luce Irigaray, Ajasta Vargas

Theses : Honours

No abstract provided.

Passion Simple And Madame, C'Est A Vous Que J'Ecris: "That's My Desire", Elizabeth Richardson Viti

French Faculty Publications

No two texts better exemplify the contemporary "he said, she said" phenomenon than Annie Ernaux's Passion simple (Simple Passion) and Alain Gerard's Madame, c'est a vous que j'eeris (Madam, It Is To You That I Am Writing). Ernaux's book, published in 1991, recounts the author's heretofore hidden affair with a foreign businessman living temporarily in France. Dissatisfied with Ernaux's account, Gerard assumes the lover's identity and chronicles events from his perspective, making Madame, e'est a vous que j' ecris, published four years later, an explicit response to Passion simple. The result is a rare …

George Sand And Cristina Di Belgiojoso's Literary Dialogue, Claire Marrone

Languages Faculty Publications

Presents a scholarly analysis of Italian woman writer Cristina Di Belgiojoso's writings in an effort to situate them better in relation to the work done by another female writer George Sand to identify the influence these two authors had on one another. Impact of their involvement in progressive politics on their work; Overview of similarities of views between these two authors; Highlights of their writings that suggests their mutual influence on one another.

Colonial Violence And Trauma In The Works Of Michèle Lacrosil And Ken Bugul, Marie-Chantal Kalisa

French Language and Literature Papers

To what extent can we say that both Lacrosil and Bugul rewrite Fanon? Through the study of Cajou and Ken, respectively the Guadeloupean and the Senegalese female protagonists, this article proposes a way to derive a specifically female perspective on colonial violence. The essay focuses on the two novels, Cajou and Le baobab fou, and examines the effect of colonial epistemological violence and its specific impact on the black female’s subjectivity. The protagonists Ken and Cajou revisit their initial trauma in a quest for knowledge of their historical heritage and engage in a dialogue with Frantz Fanon, representative of black …

Male And Female Bildung: The Mémoires De Céleste Mogador, Claire Marrone

Languages Faculty Publications

The 'Memoires de Celeste Mogador' is a Bildungsroman narrating the life a a prostitute and an actress. Censorship may have been the reason the book was not better known in its own time, and maybe even today. She eventually marries a count with whom she has an affair and follows him when he becomes French consul to Australia. The books recounts the life of an exceptional 19th century heroine, who has the strength to succeed despite a society which limits female roles and has ideas about proper marriages.

‘Little Women?’: History And Her Stories In Marie Cardinal's Comme Si De Rien N'Était, Claire Marrone

Languages Faculty Publications

This is a revised version of the talk Claire Marrone presented under the same title, on the Fiction of Marie Cardinal and Annie Ernaux, Three Centuries of French Feminist Writers Symposium, Hofstra University, Hofstra, NY, 21 April 1994.

Uncanny Performances In Colonial Narratives: Josephine Baker In "Princess Tam Tam", Elizabeth Coffman

School of Communication: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Le "Devenir Féminin" Dans La Sociéte Moderne Occidentale À Travers Les Deux Romans De Virginie Despentes, Nadia Louar

Dissertations and Theses

Les deux premiers romans de Virginie Despentes, Baise-moi (1995) et les Chiennes Savantes (1996), attestent de la mutation socio-culturelle qui affecte la societe contemporaine. Son style insolent, son langage corrosif et volontairement Prosaïque confirme et signe I 'évolution dans le monde occidental des valeurs, des désirs et aspirations de 1'homme, et plus crucialement de la femme des années 90. Plus qu'une révolution des moeurs, on assiste dans ses deux premières oeuvres á une véritable mutation culturelle qui bouleverse les rôles et modéles traditionnels des individus dans la société. Ce bouleversement qui s'exprime dans la vie banale, mais définitivement violente de …

Past, Present And Passion Tense In Annie Ernaux's Passion Simple, Claire Marrone

Languages Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Une Analyse Des Perspectives Feministes Dans L'Oeuvre De Benoite Groult (1975-1993), Charlotte Joanne Casey

Theses : Honours

The work by French author Benoite Groult (1920- ) is an expression of personal discontent. Biographer Fernando Goutier (1978, p. 98) points out that from 1968 to 1975 an increasingly acute awareness of the political and economic situation of Women compelled Groult to write Ainsi soit-elle (1975). Ainsi soit-elle is the point of departure for our study of feminist perspectives in Benoite Groult's writing. The purpose of this research project is to explore the possibilities, and the validity, of a feminist reading of a selection of essays and novels produced by Groult between 1975 and 1993. Included in this selection …