Womens writing in contemporary France New writers, new literatures in the 1990s

by Rye, Gill; Worton, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780719062278
• ISBN10: 0719062276
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-01-23
• Publisher: Manchester University Press

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. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Gill Rye is Lecturer in French at the Institute of Romance Studies, University of London.
Michael Worton is Vice-Provost and Fielden Professor of French Language and Literature, University College, London.

Table of Contents

Contributors	p. vii
Acknowledgements	p. x
Introduction	p. 1
Rewriting the past
Louise L. Lambrichs: trauma, dream and narrative	p. 29
Evermore or nevermore? Memory and identity in Marie Redonnet's fiction of the 1990s	p. 42
The female vampire: Chantal Chawaf's melancholic autofiction	p. 53
Lost and found: mother-daughter relations in Paule Constant's fiction	p. 65
Puzzling out the fathers: Sibylle Lacan's Un pere: puzzle	p. 77
Writing the dynamics of identity
Anatomical writing: Blasons d'un corps masculin, L'Ecrivaillon and La Ligne apre by Regine Detambel	p. 93
'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	p. 106
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	p. 118
The articulation of beur female identity in the works of Farida Belghoul, Ferrudja Kessas and Soraya Nini	p. 130
Saying the unsayable: identities in crisis in the early novels of Marie Darrieussecq	p. 142
Transgressions and transformation
Experiment and experience in the phototextual projects of Sophie Calle	p. 157
Christine Angot's autofictions: literature and/or reality?	p. 171
'Il n'y a pas de troisieme voie' (There is no third way): Sylvie Germain and the generic problems of the Christian novel	p. 182
The subversion of the gaze: Sherazade and other women in the work of Leila Sebbar	p. 195
Unnatural women and uncomfortable readers? Clotilde Escalle's tales of transgression	p. 207
Conclusion	p. 222
Individual author bibliography	p. 226
General bibliography	p. 250
Index	p. 258
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