Women in French Studies最新文献

{"title":"Le Pin sur la lune et autres poèmes inédits by Valentine Penrose (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/wfs.2023.a909494","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wfs.2023.a909494","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Le Pin sur la lune et autres poèmes inédits by Valentine Penrose Gina Stamm Penrose, Valentine. Le Pin sur la lune et autres poèmes inédits. Ed. Sévérine Orban. PU de Liège, 2022. Pp. 362. ISBN 978-2-87562-336-2. 14€ (paper). This collection unites previously uncollected poems by the poet Valentine Penrose (1898-1978), a figure often associated with the surrealist movement, although, as the editor points out, her career included varied work that extends beyond the constraints of that movement (39). This book is as necessary as it is overdue, as Penrose has long been overshadowed by some of her contemporaries and has languished without much critical attention. In addition to the general obscurity to which many of the women associated with the surrealists have been subjected over the last century, Penrose herself spent a great deal of her life outside of Europe, particularly in India, and concentrating on spiritual practice rather than self-promotion, although she maintained a long friendship with Paul Eluard who would be a champion of her work. So there has been a disconnect [End Page 164] between Penrose and both a popular and critical readership. Hopefully this new edition will make her work more visible and accessible to a new audience. This volume includes a biographical forward of the editor that, in addition to providing context for the works contained in the book, also shows the extensive archival work that Sévérine Orban has done to establish the versions of poems presented here. Orban indicates where there is uncertainty in the documentation about the sequence of events in Penrose's life. The editor also clearly spells out the principle of selection for the poems in the volume: unpublished poems, poems having been published in periodicals but that subsequently remained largely unavailable, and selected poems that had appeared in previous collections, but which Penrose had corrected in her personal copies and which were never corrected in subsequent editions. Orban also highlights the major themes and motifs of Penrose's work, which engages heavily with the natural world, spirituality, and, as her writing progressed, Sapphic imagery which was inseparable from these other domains. The poems are arranged chronologically by decade. The volume also includes endnotes and helpfully contains an annotated bibliography of both Penrose's publications and the (sadly limited) critical works dedicated to her. This volume will hopefully lead to an increase in the attention paid to this too-often-overlooked poet. The work that has gone into collecting and editing the poems is evident. The only point of criticism to be made is perhaps more of a regret based on the knowledge that since Penrose will almost assuredly never benefit from the Pléiade treatment, more thorough annotation would have been welcome. In addition, for ease of comparing the different versions of the poems, recourse to endnotes for the changes made is not as user-friendly as","PeriodicalId":391338,"journal":{"name":"Women in French Studies","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135052905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Alys Robi, chanteuse du Québec et féministe avant l'heure","authors":"Simone Grossman","doi":"10.1353/wfs.2023.a909478","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wfs.2023.a909478","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: Dans Alys Robi a été formidable. Nouveau regard sur une figure d'avant-garde (2021), Chantal Ringuet rend hommage à la diva de la chanson québécoise des années 40, qui fut sa grand-tante. À l'artiste canadienne française qui se libère des traditions patriarcales, puis est abusivement psychiatrisée et bâillonnée par l'autorité familiale toute puissante d'avant la Révolution tranquille, Ringuet fait justice dans un récit mémoriel imprégné d'écriture de soi. Conçu à l'origine par l'ultime petite-fille de la lignée, comme le roman de sa filiation féminine, l'ouvrage vise à « rapiécer la mémoire familiale » en extrayant « un récit tout neuf d'une vie brisée ». En référence à Régine Robin, Ringuet s'interroge : « Ma mémoire est-elle saturée ? Je n'y vois plus clair ». Le trop-plein de tristesse imprégnant la commémoration d'Alys Robi dans l'espace urbain québécois aboutit dans l'écrit à « révéler la chanteuse sous un jour nouveau ». Par ailleurs, les photos d'archives « racontent une autre histoire » que Ringuet recompose. Son écriture visuelle reconstitue la vie d'Alys Robi en faisant chatoyer les souvenirs. Réactualisant le parcours artistique et émotionnel de la « diva latine du Nord », incarnation québécoise de l'américanité, Ringuet réécrit l'histoire des femmes du Québec et du Canada.","PeriodicalId":391338,"journal":{"name":"Women in French Studies","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135053447","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Resurrecting Jane de La Vaudère: Literary Shapeshifter of the Belle Époque by Sharon Larson (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/wfs.2023.a909489","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wfs.2023.a909489","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Resurrecting Jane de La Vaudère: Literary Shapeshifter of the Belle Époque by Sharon Larson Melanie E. Collado Larson, Sharon. Resurrecting Jane de La Vaudère: Literary Shapeshifter of the Belle Époque. The Pennsylvania State UP, 2022. Pp. [i]-xiii; 190. ISBN 978-0-271-09444-1. $99.95 (hardcover). Resurrecting Jane de La Vaudère: Literary Shapeshifter of the Belle-Époque révèle l'histoire méconnue de Jane de La Vaudère (1857-1908), femme de lettres aujourd'hui oubliée malgré la notoriété dont elle jouissait à la Belle Époque. Signalant dès l'introduction l'absence de fonds d'archives spécifiquement dédiés à La Vaudère et le peu de documents conservés, Sharon Larson mène ses recherches biographiques sur plusieurs fronts et parvient à rassembler suffisamment d'informations pour tracer le portrait d'une écrivaine fascinante tant en raison de son parcours que de son ingéniosité et de sa résilience. Resurrecting Jane de La Vaudère est une étude biographique et littéraire organisée en six chapitres. Le premier chapitre est la biographie de Jeanne Scrive (alias Jane de La Vaudère). On y découvre la famille de l'écrivaine, sa trajectoire de jeune bourgeoise mariée à dix-huit ans et mère à dix-neuf ans, son entrée sur la scène littéraire, son divorce, les conditions de son décès et le manque d'empressement familial à préserver sa renommée posthume. Le deuxième chapitre examine plus attentivement la métamorphose de Jeanne Crapez, née Scrive, en Jane de La Vaudère, écrivaine prolifique aux héroïnes sulfureuses. Dans cette section, les analyses iconographiques proposées par Sharon Larson soulignent la sagacité de La Vaudère et sa modernité. Les deux chapitres suivants portent sur la pratique du plagiat chez La Vaudère et ses implications. Le troisième chapitre est une étude particulièrement intéressante de quelques emprunts littéraires de La Vaudère. S'appuyant sur les travaux d'Hélène Maurel-Indart et de Deborah Halbert, et prenant comme exemples des extraits des Demi-sexes de La Vaudère, de Notre Cœur et d'En Sicile de Guy de Maupassant, Sharon Larson montre d'une part que le plagiat est flagrant et, d'autre part, que ces passages copiés permettent à l'écrivaine de reproduire le discours des hommes de lettres sur la femme en se le réappropriant et en le remettant en question de façon plus ou moins directe. Larson affirme de façon convaincante qu'il résulte de ces emprunts un dialogue entre des discours conventionnels sur la féminité et des discours transgressifs (quel que soit le retour au conformisme de certains dénouements). Le quatrième chapitre analyse la riposte de La Vaudère à un plagiat dont elle s'est dit victime. Après avoir dénoncé publiquement les similarités entre sa pantomime Rêve de Mysès et Rêve d'Egypte de Mathilde de Mornay (Missy), La Vaudère ne se contente pas d'entamer des poursuites judiciaires ; elle exploite avantageusement le scandale provoqué par la mise en scène très lesbienne de Rêve d'Égypte en publiant un roman à c","PeriodicalId":391338,"journal":{"name":"Women in French Studies","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135053449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Femmes et luxe, perspectives littéraires ed. by Soundouss El Kettani and Isabelle Tremblay (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/wfs.2023.a909497","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wfs.2023.a909497","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Femmes et luxe, perspectives littéraires ed. by Soundouss El Kettani and Isabelle Tremblay Jennifer Carr El Kettani, Soundouss and Isabelle Tremblay, eds. Femmes et luxe, perspectives littéraires. PU de Rennes, 2022. Pp. 218. ISBN 978-2-7535-8584-3. 22€ (paper). In their introduction, the editors cite a relative lack of literary scholarship on luxury and gender, suggesting that understanding the former as a \"topos littéraire [End Page 168] genré\" (205) might offer privileged insight into the feminist implications of material culture. This intuition informs Femmes et luxe's twelve chapters (all written in French), which, though they largely remain tethered to metropolitan France, nonetheless open transhistorical and transcultural lines of inquiry into luxury as a social logic that, from the Ancien Régime to the present, has defined—and often circumscribed—women's agency. The volume's wide-ranging priorities foreground luxury's semantic flexibility, uniting phenomena as disparate as jewelry and oral contraceptives, freedom of movement and literature itself. Though this variability risks dulling luxury's critical usefulness, it also reveals the term's capaciousness as shorthand for a rarefied sphere whose limits often map onto class and gender. Ultimately, the volume's eclectic scope offers less a systematic overview of luxury, literature, and gender than an invitation to future work on their conjuncture (what, for instance, might literary representations of luxury tell us about non-normative gender identities?). Still, individual chapters will appeal to scholars of French and Francophone North African literature whose work intersects with gender and cultural studies, particularly those interested in literary representations of material culture. Femmes et luxe is organized into three parts. Part I, \"Les discours dominants sur le luxe,\" revisits accepted discourses on luxury. In \"De la notion de luxe à celle de luxure : une perspective féministe,\" Frédérique Chevillot offers a feminist reading of recent (male-authored) theorizations of luxury that, by foregrounding the shared etymology of luxe and luxure, replicate misogynist discourses. In \"Le luxe des dessous. Une transgression du discours social par le discours littéraire de Zola,\" Corina Sandu follows the trope \"dessous douteux\" across Zola's corpus, where unwashed women's undergarments connote a \"luxe sale\" (48) associated with bourgeois moral corruption. In \"La déconstruction des 'belles images' comme impératif social et comme divertissement pascalien,\" Sophie Bastien analyzes the polysemic title of Simone de Beauvoir's Les belles images (1966), whose proliferating referents (from advertisements to bourgeois gender norms) obscure social ills. In \"La situation des femmes de lettres dans la Bibliothèque de la Pléiade,\" Tetzner Leny Bien Aimé approaches literature as a luxury object, examining the gendered gatekeeping that conditioned Beauvoir's 2018 entry into the Pléiade. Part II, \"","PeriodicalId":391338,"journal":{"name":"Women in French Studies","volume":"83 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135053450","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"\"Elle ne me quitte pas\": Isabelle Eberhardt and Language in Leïla Sebbar's Lettre à mon père","authors":"Sage Goellner","doi":"10.1353/wfs.2023.a909482","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wfs.2023.a909482","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This article analyzes Leïla Sebbar's interest in and representation of Isabelle Eberhardt, who crisscrosses Sebbar's texts as an imaginary precursor who possesses many of Sebbar's own contradictions and aspirations. This essay examines how Sebbar uses the figure of Eberhardt in exploration of her Franco-Algerian linguistic and cultural identity. Drawing principally from three works, Lettres parisiennes : autopsie d'un exil (1986), \"Isabelle l'Algérien\" (1988), and Lettre à mon père (2021), the author argues that Sebbar's depiction of Eberhardt as a multilingual French and Arabic speaker connects the two sides of Sebbar's divided identity. In addition, Sebbar's emphasis on the fact that both women write and publish in French underscores the powerful link between them. In these works, Eberhardt acts as a cipher for Sebbar and remains a touchstone of Sebbar's reflections upon identity, language, and reconciliation.","PeriodicalId":391338,"journal":{"name":"Women in French Studies","volume":"7 3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135053442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Lucrece and Brutus: Glory in the Land of Tender by Madeleine De Scudéry (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/wfs.2023.a909491","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wfs.2023.a909491","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Lucrece and Brutus: Glory in the Land of Tender by Madeleine De Scudéry Karine Macarez De Scudéry, Madeleine. Lucrece and Brutus: Glory in the Land of Tender. Ed. and Trans. Sharon Diane Nell. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 84. Iter Press, 2021. Pp. [ix]- 365. ISBN 978-1-64959-022-0. $59.95 (paper). L'ouvrage de Sharon Diane Nell s'inscrit dans la ligne directrice des études en Women's and Gender Studies valorisant un canon féminin tombé dans l'oubli. Autour d'un triptyque regroupant deux harangues des Femmes illustres ou les harangues héroïques de 1642, des extraits de Clélie entre les dates de 1654 et 1660, et Le discours de la gloire paru en 1671, l'auteure propose au lecteur une redécouverte moderne en langue anglaise des textes de Madeleine de Scudéry depuis leurs traductions aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Si l'on comprend de suite l'enjeu d'une telle entreprise visant à combler une lacune, l'originalité de Nell est d'articuler son approche autour des figures emblématiques de Lucrèce et Brutus avec pour fil conducteur la gloire, afin de faire ressortir toute la polysémie du terme qui évolue dans l'œuvre de Madeleine de Scudéry et qui dépasse ses deux notions premières. En effet, l'emploi de la terminologie trouve son origine dans la conception romaine de la gloire, par l'entremise des textes de Cicéron, mais elle constitue également un référent chrétien dans la littérature religieuse au XVIIe siècle. Outre une introduction générale, l'ouvrage comporte quatre corpus de textes incluant invariablement un ou plusieurs textes traduits, précédés par une introduction de Nell, permettant ainsi la présentation du contexte social et politique dans lesquels ceux-ci s'inscrivent. Des annexes font état des sources anciennes existantes sur Lucrèce et Brutus, proposent un glossaire des faux amis, et dressent une liste des personnages apparaissant dans Clélie, offrant ainsi au lecteur des points de repères. L'introduction générale de Nell se veut didactique en présentant la biographie de Madeleine de Scudéry, le mouvement social et littéraire des salons, des concepts clefs tels que la préciosité ou la galanterie, tout en s'appuyant sur une historiographie riche et variée englobant chercheurs outre-Atlantique et français. Le premier corpus de textes inclut les harangues onze et dix-sept, publiées en 1642 dans Femmes illustres ou les harangues héroïques. La onzième harangue, de Lucrèce à Colatin, expose le déshonneur de Lucrèce suite au viol de Sextus Tarquin. La dix-septième harangue, de Clélie à Persenna, survient après le suicide de Lucrèce, une fois la République romaine établie. Les deux textes laissent entrevoir la polysémie autour de la notion de gloire qui peut s'apparenter tantôt à la vertu, l'héroïsme, la fidélité matrimoniale, la réputation, la fierté ou encore le statut social. Le deuxième corpus regroupe trois textes issus de Clélie dans le livre premier de 1654, et s'articule autour des codes langagiers qu","PeriodicalId":391338,"journal":{"name":"Women in French Studies","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135053454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Viendra le temps du feu by Wendy Delorme (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/wfs.2023.a909500","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wfs.2023.a909500","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Viendra le temps du feu by Wendy Delorme Carole Mafotsing Kougang Delorme, Wendy. Viendra le temps du feu. Camboukaris, 2021. Pp. 252. ISBN 978-2-36624-557-8. 19€ (papier). Publié aux éditions Camboukaris en 2021, Viendra le temps du feu est un roman de science-fiction de l'artiste, actrice et défenseuse des droits de la communauté LGBT, Wendy Delorme. C'est un roman choral dans lequel l'auteure donne la voix à plusieurs personnages pour raconter leur histoire dans une société complètement fermée et coupée du reste du monde. Les temps forts de cet ouvrage sont marqués par des récits des personnes vivant dans une société en dégénérescence. Offusqués, déprimés, enfermés, privés de liberté ou pris au piège dans un système totalitaire, les personnages semblent tous être à la recherche d'une bouffé d'air qui leur donnerait enfin de contempler un monde meilleur. Dans cet ouvrage, Wendy Delorme dénonce plusieurs maux dans la vie politique de cette société et la violation des droits de bases des citoyens tels que l'éducation et la santé. Nous avons un État qui, au lieu d'être garant de la protection et du bien-être des populations, se présente plutôt comme leur pire cauchemar. Viendra le temps du feu présente une rupture du contrat social, au profit d'un système de contrôle et d'assujettissement des citoyens par le pouvoir politique. Delorme envisage ainsi un avenir opaque dans l'évolution de la société et des rapports qu'ont le gouvernement et le peuple. Par ailleurs, c'est aussi un ouvrage d'éveil des consciences par rapport au changement climatique et des différentes convulsions auxquelles la planète de demain fera face si certaines mesures ne sont pas prises. Cependant, elle semble suggérer qu'en fait, bien qu'on observe le globe gémir sous le joug de tous ces changements, le discours politique vise plutôt à prendre avantage de la situation pour établir et exécuter un agenda bien défini. Le changement climatique dans la perspective abordée par Delorme n'est qu'un levier dont se servent les hommes politiques et de pouvoir pour faire avancer leur cause et exercer le contrôle de la manière qui leur convient. Pour faire ventiler son message, Delorme prend une approche détective dans laquelle elle donne la parole aux sans voix afin de faire ressortir le malaise qui sévit dans cette société. Il est intéressant de noter qu'en réalité, elle est plus à l'écoute des femmes que des hommes, dans la mesure où toutes les voix dans le [End Page 173] roman sont féminines à l'exception de celle du personnage Raphaël. Cette décision est toutefois justifiée dans le texte parce que seuls les hommes vont en exil pour ne plus jamais revenir, tandis que les femmes restent pour prendre soin des enfants. Ce qui justifierait aussi pourquoi le plus grand combat contre l'autoritarisme dans le roman est mené par des femmes. C'est aussi intéressant de remarquer la manière dont l'auteure propose ou suggère un moyen d'affranchissement des populations par le renversemen","PeriodicalId":391338,"journal":{"name":"Women in French Studies","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135053764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Beauty and the Beast: The Original Story by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/wfs.2023.a909495","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wfs.2023.a909495","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Beauty and the Beast: The Original Story by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve Kelsey B. Madsen Villeneuve, Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de. Beauty and the Beast: The Original Story. Ed. and Trans. Aurora Wolfgang. The Other Voices in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 74. Iter Press, 2020. Pp. [i]-xviii; 191. ISBN 978-0-86698-627-4. $41.95 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-86698-760-8. $41.95 (eBook). Aurora Wolfgang recontextualizes the classic tale of Beauty and the Beast by providing a robust historical and interpretative introduction alongside a full translation of Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve's original text from the 1740 book La jeune Américaine et les contes marins, as republished and edited by Élisa Biancardi in 2008. Wolfgang makes a compelling case for re-examining Villeneuve's sprawling fairy tale (in translation, it is nearly 100 pages long) for [End Page 165] its own literary qualities, rather than simply as the inspiration for a story frequently adapted in popular culture across several centuries. The publisher describes Wolfgang's edition as \"the first integral English translation of Villeneuve's original tale.\" While other translations of Villeneuve's Beauty and the Beast exist, they omit the original dedication, preface and frame story. The most commonly reproduced English translation also modifies the main text; James Robinson Planché's 1858 version edits passages to create a more \"wholesome\" tone. For instance, in Villeneuve's version and Wolfgang's translation, the Beast asks Beauty every night if he may sleep with her, but Planché sanitizes this request into a nightly proposal of marriage. We learn in Villeneuve's original version that the Beast's curse can only be broken if he marries a worthy woman who asks him to marry her. Furthermore, the Beast's curse encompasses both his physical appearance and his wits (that is, it makes him appear stupid and brutish) so that he is an unappealing romantic partner; he is doubly bête in Villeneuve. In fact, the crude nightly question is actually a means of prompting the virtuous Beauty to ask for marriage when she is finally ready to accept his attentions. Wolfgang offers anglophone readers an accurate rendering that reflects Villeneuve's intentions, and her scholarly footnotes clarify pertinent literary details and translation choices. Her translation flows smoothly; she achieved her goal to \"reflect the simple, unembellished language used in the fairy-tale genre\" (71). By reuniting The Beauty and the Beast with the frame story of La jeune Américaine, Wolfgang draws attention to thematic resonances between the realistic frame story and the fantastical tale, such as preoccupations with finances and marital relationships. The frame story recounts the lives of two young men originally from La Rochelle, one of whom leaves to make his fortune in Saint Domingue (present-day Haiti). His daughter is sent to France to be raised in the family of her father's friend. When she ","PeriodicalId":391338,"journal":{"name":"Women in French Studies","volume":"89 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135052337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Travels into Spain by Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, baronne d'Aulnoy (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/wfs.2023.a909493","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wfs.2023.a909493","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Travels into Spain by Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, baronne d'Aulnoy Nathalie Hester Le Jumel de Barneville, Marie-Catherine, baronne d'Aulnoy. Travels into Spain. Ed. and Trans. Gabrielle Verdier. Iter Press, 2022. Pp. 303. ISBN 978-1-64959-057-2. $54.95 (Paper). ISBN 978-1-64959-058-9. $54.95 (eBook). With this publication, a key work by Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, baronne d'Aulnoy, is now available in a new English translation. As editor and translator Gabrielle Verdier emphasizes in her excellent introduction, while d'Aulnoy is recognized today primarily for her fairy tales, it was her historical works that launched her career as a writer. In addition, Travels into Spain was the publication for which she was perhaps best known in the decades following its 1691 publication. Indeed, this epistolary travel account was quickly translated into English and went through numerous editions in both French and English and was considered a reference for European travelers through the end of the eighteenth century. Although d'Aulnoy's works were popular in the early modern period, Travels into Spain met with a negative reception later on when, for example, editors like Raymond Foulché-Delbosc criticized her use of explicitly fictional devices, in particular embedded tales and invented travel companions, and concluded that d'Aulnoy had never set foot in Spain. Verdier cogently elucidates the connections between gender and genre and highlights the ways in which the author, who faced exile after attempting to set up her husband for the crime of treason, was able to establish herself as a woman writer. D'Aulnoy was not only the first Frenchwoman to publish a travel account as a complete relation de voyage, but she was also the first to publish historical memoirs. Furthermore, at a time when works by women came out anonymously, d'Aulnoy revealed her gender in several of her early works, which have the author, Madame B*** D***, listed on the title page. Verdier terms this \"a stunning move\" (19). Verdier's lively translation skillfully conveys d'Aulnoy's attention to landscape, keen eye for societal details, and superb story-telling abilities. The fifteen letters, which recount travel from Bayonne to Toledo, are brimming with anecdotes about the challenges of travel, depictions of landscapes and bustling towns and cities, descriptions of Spanish cultural and religious rituals (Lent, bullfighting, Inquisition trials, conversation at the Spanish court), and dramatic stories of Spanish love and violence, all of which would have been titillating for [End Page 163] her French readers. D'Aulnoy's focus on women's fashion and behavior stands out in particular. In fact, as the letters make clear and Verdier underscores in the introduction, part of the appeal of d'Aulnoy's text comes precisely from her position as a woman traveler, intent on conveying the point of view of a French noblewoman with literary talents who had access to women","PeriodicalId":391338,"journal":{"name":"Women in French Studies","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135052916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Transforming Family: Queer Kinship and Migration in Contemporary Francophone Literature by Jocelyn Frelier (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/wfs.2023.a909486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wfs.2023.a909486","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Transforming Family: Queer Kinship and Migration in Contemporary Francophone Literature by Jocelyn Frelier Adrienne Angelo Frelier, Jocelyn. Transforming Family: Queer Kinship and Migration in Contemporary Francophone Literature. U of Nebraska P, 2022. Pp. 264. ISBN 978-1-4962-2509-2. $60 (paper) and 978-1-4962-3365-3. (eBook). Narratives of exile, migration, and displacement figure prominently in contemporary francophone cultural productions. What about the complexities of family dynamics and filiation in these situations of resettlement? What in fact constitutes \"family\"? What factors create a sense of belonging or nonbelonging? What impact does one's heritage have on the stories one tells? How might alternative compositions of family provide a sense of transformative agency? Jocelyn Frelier deftly navigates these questions among others in her carefully researched and intellectually creative work, Transforming Family: Queer Kinship and Migration in Contemporary Francophone Literature. Frelier elegantly interweaves personal narrative and literary analysis and thus performs autoethnographic praxis. She shares her story, which includes her own family's experience of migration, while making connections to the material she studies (xiii). This degree of auto-reflexivity mirrors the nuanced life-writing gestures of the six contemporary authors she analyzes in individual chapters: Nina Bouraoui, [End Page 152] Leïla Slimani, Leïla Sebbar, Azouz Begag, Fouad Laroui, and Abdellah Taïa. After providing pertinent biographical information which relates to each author's literary corpus, Frelier explains how these writers, each of whom engages with autofictional practices, offer \"decolonial and queer\" understandings of what she terms \"trans-families\" in their respective transnational narratives of migration between France and Algeria and Morocco (1). The introduction articulates the stakes of this work and unpacks several critical terms that underpin Frelier's analysis. Of note is Frelier's description of trans-family. This term sees the queer potential in family (re)compositions to move away from normative familial structures whose legal or otherwise regulated status comes at the expense of nontraditional ones (6-7). Frelier relates how the novels she has chosen for her project connect with \"the becoming trans-of cultural production\" (2). Accordingly, queer studies plays a vital role in Frelier's project for thinking through the transformative possibilities of family and filiation. In this work, queering relates to concepts of time and history, the context of colonialism and the postcolonial era, and the construction of self through autofictional writing practices. The first part of the work focuses on transnational motherhood and includes two chapters: one on Nina Bouraoui's Garçon manqué (2000) and another on Leïla Slimani's Chanson douce (2016). From the first-person narrator's inheritance of her mother's nonbelonging in postcolonial France ","PeriodicalId":391338,"journal":{"name":"Women in French Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135053230","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}