Women's Lives in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature

ISBN-13: 9783319822006 / Angielski / Miękka / 2018 / 169 str.

Florence Ramond Jurney; Karen McPherson

Spis treści

CONTENTS

Preface: Where the Lines Cross

Karen McPherson and Florence Ramond Jurney

 

I.  Defining the Mother

 

Aban-donner: The Maternal in Le jour où je n’étais pas là

Laurie Corbin

 

The Accidental Author: Motherhood, Woundability, and Writing in Maryse Condé’s La vie sans fards

Nicole Simek

 

Childless Mothers: Personal Perspectives from Francophone Women Writers

Alison Rice

 

“If you don’t have children, you must be…”: Linda Lê’s À l’enfant que je n’aurai pas and Voluntary Non-Motherhood

Julie Rodgers

 

Linda Lê’s Antigonal Refusal of Motherhood

Gillian Ni Cheallaigh

 

Free At Last: Coming to Terms with the Mother in the Woman in La noce d’Anna by Nathacha Appanah

Florence Ramond Jurney

 

II.  Defining the Aging Self

 

La dernière adresse: Possessions, Dispossession, and the Preservation of Memory

Jean Anderson

 

Redefining the Self: Explorations of Aging in Michèle Sarde’s Constance et la cinquantaine and Nancy Huston’s Dolce agonia

Susan Ireland and Patrice J. Proulx

 

A Daughter No More: (National) Identity and the Adult Orphan in Loin de mon père by Véronique Tadjo

Amy Baram Reid

 

Writing the Mother Immortal: Cixous and Dupré

Karen McPherson

Notes on the Contributors

Bibliography

Index

O autorze

Florence Ramond Jurney is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Gettysburg College, USA. She has published two critical monographs: Voix/es libres: Maternité et identité féminine dans la littérature antillaise (2006) and Representations of the Island in Caribbean Literature: Caribbean Women Redefine their Homelands (2009).  She also coordinated a special issue of Nouvelles études francophones on Gisèle Pineau’s work (2012).

Karen McPherson is Professor of French at the University of Oregon, USA. She is the author of two critical monographs: Incriminations: Guilty Women/Telling Stories (1994) and Archaeologies of an Uncertain Future: Recent Generations of Canadian Women Writing (2006). She is also a poet and literary translator. 

Blurb

The essays in this volume provide an overview and critical account of prevalent trends and theoretical arguments informing current investigations into literary treatments of motherhood and aging. They explore how two key stages in women’s lives—maternity and old age—are narrated and defined in fictions and autobiographical writings by contemporary French and francophone women. Through close readings of Maryse Condé, Hélène Cixous, Zahia Rahmani, Linda Lê, Pierrette Fleutieux, and Michèle Sarde, among others, these essays examine related topics such as dispossession, female friendship, and women’s relationships with their mothers. By adopting a broad, synthetic approach to these two distinct and defining stages in women’s lives, this volume  elucidates how these significant transitional moments set the stage for women’s evolving definitions (and interrogations) of their identities and roles.