Adolphe Belot was the envy of his contemporaries Emile Zola and Gustave Flaubert: his books, unlike theirs, were best-sellers. He specialized in popular fiction that provided readers with just the right mix of salaciousness and propriety. (Under the initials A. B. he dispensed entirely with propriety.)
The sensational Mademoiselle Giraud, ma femme (published in 1870 with a preface by Zola) tells of the suffering of a naive young man whose new bride will not agree to consummate the marriage. Eventually he learns from an acquaintance, to his amazement, that their wives are...
Adolphe Belot was the envy of his contemporaries Emile Zola and Gustave Flaubert: his books, unlike theirs, were best-sellers. He specialized in po...
Elsa Bernstein lived at the center of Munich's cultural life from the 1890s into the next century. Her literary salon was frequented by such authors as Rainer Maria Rilke, Theodor Fontane, Henrik Ibsen, and Thomas Mann. Her plays, written under the pseudonym Ernst Rosmer, are noteworthy for their unconventional female figures, uninhibited language, taboo subjects, and realistic detail. Susanne Kord, the editor and translator of Twilight, discusses the reception of Bernstein's works--at first enthusiastic, then increasingly sexist--and the theme, in Twilight, of the culturally...
Elsa Bernstein lived at the center of Munich's cultural life from the 1890s into the next century. Her literary salon was frequented by such author...
When the rich and well-connected Raoule de Venerande becomes enamored of Jacques Silvert, a poor young man who makes artificial flowers for a living, she turns him into her mistress and eventually into her wife. Raoule's suitor, a cigar-smoking former hussar officer, becomes an accomplice in the complications that ensue.
When the rich and well-connected Raoule de Venerande becomes enamored of Jacques Silvert, a poor young man who makes artificial flowers for a livin...
The beautiful Marquise de Banneville meets a handsome marquis, and they fall in love. But the young woman is actually a young man (brought up as a girl and completely in the dark about her--or his--true sex), while the marquis is actually a young woman who likes to cross-dress. Will they live happily ever after?
In the introduction, Joan DeJean presents the fascinating puzzle of authorship of this lighthearted gender-bending tale written in the late seventeenth century in France. Was it Francois-Timoleon de Choisy, an abbot who was happiest in drag? Marie-Jeanne L'Heritier, an...
The beautiful Marquise de Banneville meets a handsome marquis, and they fall in love. But the young woman is actually a young man (brought up as a ...
The beautiful Marquise de Banneville meets a handsome marquis, and they fall in love. But the young woman is actually a young man (brought up as a girl and completely in the dark about her--or his--true sex), while the marquis is actually a young woman who likes to cross-dress. Will they live happily ever after?
In the introduction, Joan DeJean presents the fascinating puzzle of authorship of this lighthearted gender-bending tale written in the late seventeenth century in France. Was it Francois-Timoleon de Choisy, an abbot who was happiest in drag? Marie-Jeanne L'Heritier, an...
The beautiful Marquise de Banneville meets a handsome marquis, and they fall in love. But the young woman is actually a young man (brought up as a ...
Through literary works and public appearances, Edith Bruck, born 1932 in Hungary, has devoted her life to bearing witness to what she experienced in the Nazi concentration camps. In 1954 she settled in Rome and is today the most prolific writer of Holocaust narrative in Italian. The book is composed in two parts. "Lettera alla madre"--an imaginary dialogue between Bruck and her mother, who died in Auschwitz--probes the question of self-identity, the pain of loss and displacement, the power of language to help recover the past, and the ultimate impossibility of that recovery. "Tracce," a...
Through literary works and public appearances, Edith Bruck, born 1932 in Hungary, has devoted her life to bearing witness to what she experienced i...
Set in prerevolutionary France, Histoire d'Ernestine tells of the love between an innocent young woman and an aristocrat. Ernestine, German-born and orphaned, is an apprentice painter putting the finishing touches on a portrait when the marquis de Clemengis, elegant and handsome, enters the studio. Recognizing him as the subject of the portrait, she gestures for him to be seated and goes on working, looking back and forth between him and his likeness. The world-weary aristocrat is smitten.
In graceful, understated prose, Marie Riccoboni shows how her heroine learns to...
Set in prerevolutionary France, Histoire d'Ernestine tells of the love between an innocent young woman and an aristocrat. Ernestine, German-...
"The woman poet...must sing, just as birds fly and rivers flow," wrote Carolina Coronado in 1846. In Spain of that time, a group of women had begun to publish poetry. Their verse--Romantic, predominantly lyric, and often linked to liberal reform--was novel and controversial, because few women had ventured into print. The poets collected in this anthology asserted in different ways their imagination and literary voice.
Susan Kirkpatrick provides an overview of the period, and Anna-Marie Aldaz adds a discussion of Spanish versification as well as biographical sketches of the...
"The woman poet...must sing, just as birds fly and rivers flow," wrote Carolina Coronado in 1846. In Spain of that time, a group of women had begun...
Italian poetry of the last century is far from homogeneous: genres and movements have often been at odds with one another, engaging the economic, political, and social tensions of post-Unification Italy. The thirty-eight poets included in this anthology, some of whose poems are translated here for the first time, represent this literary diversity and competition: there are symbolists (Gabriele D'Annunzio), free-verse satirists (Gian Pietro Lucini), hermetic poets (Salvatore Quasimodo), feminist poets (Sibilla Aleramo), twilight poets (Sergio Corazzini), fragmentists (Camillo Sbarbaro), new...
Italian poetry of the last century is far from homogeneous: genres and movements have often been at odds with one another, engaging the economic, p...
A dugout canoe comes ashore on the island of Saint-Barthelemy in the Antilles; in it are a black man, Arsene, and a sleeping white child, Sarah. Seeking refuge, they are taken in by a good man, but the overseer of his plantation threatens both Arsene and Sarah with the loss of their freedom.
Deborah Jenson and Doris Kadish introduce Sarah, an 1821 novella by Desbordes-Valmore, explaining its autobiographical background, political context (the revolt of blacks against Napoleon's soldiers), and literary genre (sentimentalism). The novella was a precursor to anticolonial and...
A dugout canoe comes ashore on the island of Saint-Barthelemy in the Antilles; in it are a black man, Arsene, and a sleeping white child, Sarah. Se...