Women's writing in contemporary France : new writers, new literatures in the 1990s / edited by Gill Rye and Michael Worton.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Rye, Gill, 1948-

Worton, Michael, 1951-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

French literature--20th century--History and criticism.

French literature.

French literature--Women authors.

Physical Description:

ix, 262 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press ; New York : Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 2002.

Summary:

The 1990s witnessed on explosion in women's writing in France, with a particularly exciting new generation of writers coming to the fore, such as Christine Angot, Marie Darrieussecq and Regine Detambel. Other authors such as Paule Constant, Sylvie Germain, Marie Redonnet and Leila Sebbar, who had begun publishing in the 1980s, claimed their mainstream status in the 1990s with new texts. This book provides an up-to-date introduction to and analysis of new women's writing in contemporary France, including both new writers of the 1990s and their more established counter-parts. The editors' incisive introduction situates these authors and their texts at the centre of the current trends and issues concerning French literary production today, whilst fifteen original essays focus on individual writers. The volume includes specialist bibliographies on each writer, incorporating English translations, major interviews, and key critical studies. Quotations are given in both French and English throughout. An invaluable study resource, this book is written in a clear and accessible style and will be of interest to the general reader as well as to students of all levels, to teachers of a wide range of courses on French culture, and to specialist researchers of French and Francophone literature.

Contents:

I Rewriting the past

1 Louise L. Lambrichs: trauma, dream and narrative / Victoria Best 29

2 Evermore or nevermore? Memory and identity in Marie Redonnet's fiction of the 1990s / Aine Smith 42

3 The female vampire: Chantal Chawaf's melancholic autofiction / Kathryn Robson 53

4 Lost and found: mother-daughter relations in Paule Constant's fiction / Gill Rye 65

5 Puzzling out the fathers: Sibylle Lacan's Un pere: puzzle / Elizabeth Fallaize 77

II Writing the dynamics of identity

6 Anatomical writing: Blasons d'un corps masculin, L'Ecrivaillon and La Ligne apre by Regine Detambel / Marie-Claire Barnet 93

7 'On ne s'entendait plus et c'etait parfait ainsi' (They could no longer hear each other and it was just fine that way): misunderstandings in the novels of Agnes Desarthe / Sarah Alyn Stacey 106

8 Textual mirrors and uncertain reflections: gender and narrative in L'Hiver de beaute, Les Ports du silence and La Rage au bois dormant by Christiane Baroche / Gill Rye 118

9 The articulation of beur female identity in the works of Farida Belghoul, Ferrudja Kessas and Soraya Nini / Siobhan McIlvanney 130

10 Saying the unsayable: identities in crisis in the early novels of Marie Darrieussecq / Shirley Jordan 142

III Transgressions and transformation

11 Experiment and experience in the phototextual projects of Sophie Calle / Johnnie Gratton 157

12 Christine Angot's autofictions: literature and/or reality? / Marion Sadoux 171

13 'Il n'y a pas de troisieme voie' (There is no third way): Sylvie Germain and the generic problems of the Christian novel / Margaret-Anne Hutton 182

14 The subversion of the gaze: Sherazade and other women in the work of Leila Sebbar / Margaret A. Majumdar 195

15 Unnatural women and uncomfortable readers? Clotilde Escalle's tales of transgression / Michael Worton 207.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [226]-257) and index.

ISBN:

0719062268

0719062276

OCLC:

52282702