French and Francophone Literature Commons^™

Avant Et Après : Examen Du Proto-Féminisme À Travers La Résistance Littéraire En France Au Xve Siècle Et Au Mexique Au Xviie Siècle, Madison Coleman

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

This essay seeks to understand the implications of a “before” distinction in the feminist canon— i.e., why is there “proto-feminism”, and not just “feminism”? This essay will explore the works of “proto-feminist” writers, Christine de Pizan and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and examine how the feminist themes and issues prevalent throughout their respective works are in response to the respective and collective inequities and injustices they experienced. Their oeuvres provide insight into what advocacy for women and other marginalized peoples looked like outside of the modern understanding of the historical “waves” of feminism. This essay seeks to examine …

Le Proto-Féminisme De George Sand, Jasmine Harrison

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

George Sand, the pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, was a radical and revolutionary writer. Through her writing, she challenged social norms and incorporated gender equality into her novels. This presentation examines Sand's four works: Indiana, Valentine, Lélia, and La Mare au diable. The question of Sand's status as a feminist writer, or even as an early feminist writer, is explored through women's roles in society through the analysis of nineteenth-century literature.

La Voix Humaniste Dans La Grève Des Bàttu, Lauren Redding

Theses and Dissertations--Modern and Classical Languages, Literature and Cultures

This research explores how West African postcolonial literature offers a social critique of society, trapped between past and future, and how such a critique treats the ideas of feminism, westernization, and humanism. I then relate this analysis to the current theories of négritude and afropolitanism, as discussed in Sortir de la Grande Nuit by author Achille Mbembe, which creates a meaningful context and future implications for the ideas already examined. The primary text I am working with, because it covers a wide range of topics through social critique, and because the author is one of the first of her kind, …

Queer Displacements: Minorities, Mobilities, And Mobilizations In French And Francophone Literature, Thomas Muzart

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Focusing on the work of Virginie Despentes, Jean Genet, Guy Hocquenghem, and Abdellah Taïa, this dissertation challenges the antisocial turn taken in queer theory, by means of a parallel study of the authors’ geographical and intellectual itineraries. While critics like Leo Bersani and Lee Edelman have suggested that the revolutionary potential in queer identity lies in its opposition to romanticized forms of community, I argue, along with José Esteban Muñoz, that their praising of singularity and negativity is similarly extreme. Alternatively, my study shows how the geographical displacements both experienced and imagined by my primary authors can illuminate the passage …

Honoré De Balzac’S Portrayal Of The Feminine Condition In The Wild Ass’S Skin, Père Goriot, And The Lily Of The Valley, Brooke V. Musmeci

Honors Theses

In 19th century France, women appeared to be second class citizens. They were often limited in their abilities to have independence and secure their own wealth. This perception of women perhaps justifies why, as Honoré de Balzac’s novels illustrated the realities of French society, he attempted to characterize women’s struggles to obtain control and power in their lives. In his novels The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), The Lily of the Valley (1835), and Le Père Goriot (1835), Balzac sought to prove how women could improve their lot.

Firstly, in studying how women had been relegated to second-class citizens under their …

Sillage, Trace, Empreinte: La Migrance Ambulatoire De Fatou Diome, Catherine Mazauric

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

From Le ventre de l'Atlantique and Impossible de grandir to Marianne porte plainte!, going as far back as her early poems and short stories published in journals, Fatou Diome uses recurring patterns of wake, trace and footprints as different forms of physical and ethical engagements in the world. In the process of literary creation, such engagement generates a mobile third location, "a space of migrance" where various sets of cultural heritages and ethical values undergo reformulation. This paper argues that it is in such a space that Diome locates the emergence of a powerful feminine subjectivity which gained its autonomy …

If The Shoe Fits: Cinderella And Women's Voice, Farrah V. Kurronen

Honors Undergraduate Theses

One of the fundamental stories in fairy tale studies is "Cinderella": folkloric designation ATU 510A, the Persecuted Heroine. As Fairy tale and Folklore studies continue to evolve, authors beyond Basile, Perrault and Grimm are added into the Cinderella canon to lend a more nuanced approach to the study of this fairy tale. Yet "Cinderella" is still often interpreted as a tale of feminine submissiveness, in which the heroine is little more than a passive ornament or else a likeable social-climber. These interpretations stem largely from the focus of "Cinderella" stories written by men. Though studies of "Cinderella" are expanding, "Cendrillon", …

French Women In Art: Reclaiming The Body Through Creation/Les Femmes Artistes Françaises : La Réclamation Du Corps À Travers La Création, Liatris Hethcoat

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The research I have conducted for my French Major Senior Thesis is a culmination of my passion for and studies of both French language and culture and the history and practice of Visual Arts. I have examined, across the history of art, the representation of women, and concluded that until the 20^th century, these representations have been tools employed by the makers of history and those at the top of the patriarchal system, used to control women’s images and thus women themselves. I survey these representations, which are largely created by men—until the 20^th century. I discuss pre-historical …

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.

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 …

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 …

Hégémonie, Féminin Et Paradoxes De La Représentation, Alexie Tcheuyap

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Gender issues in African literature and cinema have always raised challenging questions. It seems that the real or supposed oppression of women is often Justified in biological rather than in social terms, which, in turn obfuscates the real issues. This essay addresses the problem of film reecritures, from a comparative perspective. In so doing we pay special attention to the status of the feminine. Our aim is to reconsider current trends and ideological changes in the transfer from literary to filmic text.

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.