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In Women Writing on the French Riviera Rosemary Lancaster examines the varied literary and artistic works of nine women visitors and their unique contributions to the cultural identity of the Riviera in its seminal rise to fame.

In Genius Envy Adrianna M. Paliyenko uncovers a forgotten past: the multiplicity and diversity of nineteenth-century French women’s poetic voices. Conservative critics of the time attributed genius to masculinity and dismissed the work of female authors as “feminine literature.\" Despite the efforts of leading thinkers, critics, and historians to erase women from the pages of literary history, Paliyenko shows how female poets invigorated the debate about the origins of genius and garnered recognition in their time for their creativity and bold aesthetic ideas. This fresh account of French women poets’ contributions to literature probes the history of their critical reception and considers the texts of celebrated writers such as Desbordes-Valmore, Ségalas, Blanchecotte, Siefert, and Ackermann. The results show that these women explicitly challenged the notion of genius as gendered, advocating for their rightful place in the canon.

Women’s Writing in Twenty-First Century France is the first book-length publication on women-authored literature of this period, and comprises a collection of challenging critical essays that engage with the themes, trends and issues, and with the writers and their texts, of the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Women Taking Risks in Contemporary Autobiographical Narratives explores the nature and effects of risk in self-narrative representations of life events, and is an early step towards confronting the dearth of analysis on this subject. The collection focuses on risk-taking as one of women’s articulations of authorial agency displayed in literary, testimonial, photographic, travel and film documentary forms of autobiographical expression in French. Among many themes, the book fosters discussion.

Gisèle d'Estoc was the pseudonym of a nineteenth-century French woman writer and, it turns out, artist who, among other things, was accused of being a bomb-planting anarchist, the cross-dressing lover of writer Guy de Maupassant, and the fighter of at least one duel with another woman, inspiring Bayard's famous painting on the subject. The true identity of this enigmatic woman remained unknown and was even considered fictional until recently, when Melanie C. Hawthorne resurrected d'Estoc's discarded story from the annals of forgotten history. Finding the Woman Who Didn't Existbegins with the claim by expert literary historians of France on the eve of World War II that the woman then known only as Gisèle d'Estoc was merely a hoax. More than fifty years later, Hawthorne not only proves that she did exist but also uncovers details about her fascinating life and career, along the way adding to our understanding of nineteenth-century France, literary culture, and gender identity. Hawthorne explores the intriguing life of the real d'Estoc, explaining why others came to doubt the \"experts\" and following the threads of evidence that the latter overlooked. In focusing on how narratives are shaped for particular audiences at particular times, Hawthorne also tells \"the story of the story,\" which reveals how the habits of thought fostered by the humanities continue to matter beyond the halls of academe.

Writing with a Vengeance examines the life and works of a nineteenth-century French courtesan, Céleste Vénard, later the Countess de Chabrillan. A notorious Paris courtesan, Chabrillan married into the nobility, taught herself to write (penning two series of memoirs) and, upon being widowed, wrote novels to support herself - ten, between 1857 and 1885. These novels and memoirs constitute exceptional literary and historical documents, particularly as very few sex workers before the twentieth century have left written records of their lives. Writing with a Vengeance intertwines the courtesan's autobiographical account of the horrors of her life on the streets with that era's political, medical, and cultural discourses surrounding prostitution. Though French society both silenced and refused to pardon the prostitute, Carol Mossman's literary analysis of Chabrillan's novels contends that it is through the process of writing itself that she arrived at self-forgiveness and ultimately refashioned for her damaged self a new identity and narrative.

Helene Cixous is widely regarded as one of the world's most influential feminist writers and thinkers. \"White Ink\" brings together her most revealing interviews, available in English for the first time. Spanning over four decades and including a new interview with the editor Susan Sellers, this collection presents a brilliant, running commentary on the subjects at the heart of Cixous' writing.Here, Cixous discusses her books and her creative process, her views on and insights into literature, philosophy, theatre, politics, aesthetics, faith and ethics, human relations and the state of the world. As she responds to interviewers' questions, Cixous is prompted to reflect on her roles and activities as poet, playwright, feminist theorist, professor of literature, philosopher, woman, Jew. Each interview is a remarkable performance, an event in language and thought where Cixous' celebrated intellectual and poetic force can be witnessed 'in action'. The accessibility of the interview format provides an excellent starting-point for readers new to Cixous, while those already familiar with her work will find unexpected insights and fresh elucidations of her thought.

This study is the first to examine the contribution made by women writers to politically committed literature in 1930s France. Its purpose is to bring to light the work of female authors of left-wing fiction whose novels are comparable to those of well-known male practitioners of littérature engagée, such as Paul Nizan and Louis Aragon. It analyses the work of Madeleine Pelletier, Simone Téry, Edith Thomas, Henriette Valet and Louise Weiss in the context of the inter-war models of committed literature in relation to which they were produced. Consideration of this body of fictional texts, not previously brought together by literary historians, shows how women were able to relate to fiction and to politics in inter-war France. Situating the novels within their social, historical, literary and political environment, the book contributes to the literary and cultural history of twentieth century France. The analysis of inter-war political writing by women calls into question the criteria against which women's writing has been evaluated by feminist scholarship.

Extrait: \"DE MADAME DE SEVIGNE AU COMTE DE BUSSY. A Paris, ce 25 novembre 1655. Vous faites bien l'entendu, M. le comte; sous ombre que vous écrivez comme un petit Cicéron, vous croyez qu'il vous est permis de vous moquer des gens: à la vérité, l'endroit que vous avez remarqué m'a fait rire de tout mon cœur; (...)\"

African and Caribbean peoples share a history dominated by the violent disruptions of slavery and colonialism. While much has been said about these \"geographies of pain,\" violence in the private sphere, particularly gendered violence, receives little attention. This book fills that void. It is a critical addition to the study of African and Caribbean women's literatures at a time when women from these regions are actively engaged in articulating the ways in which colonial and postcolonial violence impact women. Chantal Kalisa examines the ways in which women writers lift taboos imposed on them by their society and culture and challenge readers with their unique perspectives on violence. Comparing women from different places and times, Kalisa treats types of violence such as colonial, familial, linguistic, and war-related, specifically linked to dictatorship and genocide. She examines Caribbean writers Michele Lacrosil, Simone Schwartz-Bart, Gisèle Pineau, and Edwidge Danticat, and Africans Ken Begul, Calixthe Beyala, Nadine Bar, and Monique Ilboudo. She also includes Sembène Ousmane and Frantz Fanon for their unique contributions to the questions of violence and gender. This study advances our understanding of the attempts of African and Caribbean women writers to resolve the tension between external forms of violence and internal forms resulting from skewed cultural, social, and political rules based on gender.