num_pages: 248
description: Renaissance Women Writers is the firstbook entirely dedicated to the study of French women writers of the early modern period. The twelve essays, reflecting current trends in Renaissance scholarship in the United States, analyze the formation of women's literary identity by exploring the works of eight of themost frequently read women writers ofthis period.The genres considered include sonnets (Louise Labe, Catherine des Roches); elegies (Louise Labe, Pernette du Guillet); memoirs (Marguerite de Valois); novellas (Marguerite de Navarre); translations, plays, and dialogues (Catherine des Roches, Marguerite de Navarre); dedicatory epistles (LouiseLabe, Helisenne de Crenne, Jeanne Flore,Marie de Gournay); and novels (Marie de Gournay). Although the essays differ considerably in approach-spanning historical, textual and intertextual, political, and psychoanalytic, or drawing on structuralist and post-structuralist theories of narrative and reader reception-each views the text from a feminist perspective.The essays are grouped into three sections that reflect major characteristics of the works of French Renaissance women. Part One examines three revisionary practices in relation to dominant women writers define a female reading community to empower the female speaker; demystifY the illusion of mastery inscribed in male myths and encode these myths with the topos offemale creative bonding; and privilege the"private" over the "public" in a genre such as the memoirs that was hitherto limited to narrating public events.Part Two focuses on the female body, an object mastered and seduced in male ideology. The essays discuss how women writers de-emphasize and ultimately transcend the female body.Finally, the essays in Part Three deal for the most part with the "politics of reception" by examining how women writers maneuver within the social restrictions of their time to negotiate their entry into the public world of print.A collective awareness of the determiningrole of gender marks the essays inthis volume, providing fresh insights intothe works of Renaissance women writers.
language: English
title: Renaissance Women Writers: French Texts / American Contexts
titlecomplete: Renaissance Women Writers: French Texts / American Contexts
ratings_count: 1
publisher: Wayne State University