RLFR 250
Women in Print:Gender, Power, and Publishing in Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-Century France Spring 2015
Division I
This is not the current course catalog

This course introduces students to seventeenth-and eighteenth-century French studies through an investigation of women in print. How did women participate as writers, artisans, distributors, and consumers of print? What do their ideas and practices tell us about the shifting power dynamics within the book trade and beyond? After a brief historical introduction, the course will focus on a correspondence, advice manuals, political tracts, tragedies, memoir-novels, erotic fiction, and other works by Bernard, Charrière, Duras, Graffigny, Guyot, Lafayette, Scudéry, and others famous and forgotten. Consideration will also be given to the book as a material object through readings as well as visits to archival collections. Key issues: censorship and publicity; the invention of the author; gender and canon formation; Old Regime social hierarchies; patronage, publics, and pay. Conducted in French.