| Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France Contributor(s): Dejean, Joan (Author) |
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ISBN: 0231062303 ISBN-13: 9780231062305 Publisher: Columbia University Press OUR PRICE: $118.80 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: December 1991 Annotation: In this book, the author argues that women writers were the originators of the modern novel in France. This book gives readers of those novels an understanding of the subversive tradition in which they were created. The author portrays the involvement of women writers in the body politic and in the politics of the body as their struggle for increased control over the plots of their lives and fictions. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | European - French |
| Dewey: 843.009 |
| LCCN: 91-28239 |
| Series: Gender & Culture (Hardcover) |
| Physical Information: 1" H x 6.36" W x 9.31" (1.31 lbs) 297 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - French |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Tender Geographies offers a new version of literary history by arguing that French women writers were the originators of the modern novel. Joan DeJean exposes the gender politics of canon formation in France.During what is considered the Great Century of French Letters (1630-1715), women writers were active in numbers unheard of before or since. Featuring the best known early women novelists--ScudA(c)ry and Lafayette-- Tender Geographies repositions literary women in their contemporary context. DeJean demonstrates that women's writing was widely thought to convey a politically and socially subversive vision. Originally considered a threat to Church and State, women's novels were deliberately represented as innocent love stories by the first official literary historians and subsequently consigned to oblivion. DeJean demonstrates that the novel owes its origins to a thoroughly political act; the decision by women to make the genre a revolutionary force. |