Women and the City in French Literature and Culture

Description

The city has traditionally been configured as a fundamentally masculine space. This collection of essays seeks to question many of the idées reçues surrounding women’s ongoing association with the private, the domestic and the rural. Covering a selection of films, journals and novels from the French medieval period to the Franco-Algerian present, it challenges the traditionally gendered dichotomisation of the masculine public and feminine private upon which so much of French and European literature and culture is predicated. Is the urban flâneur a quintessentially male phenomenon, or can there exist a true flâneuse as active agent, expressing the confidence and pleasure of a woman moving freely in the urban environment? Women and the City in French Literature and Culture seeks to locate exactly where women are heading – both individually and collectively – in their relationships to the urban environment; by so doing, it nuances the conventional binaristic perception of women and the city in an endeavour to redirect future research in women’s studies towards more interesting and representative urban destinations.

Series Editors’ Preface
List of illustrations
Notes on contributors
Introduction - Siobhán McIlvanney and Gillian Ni Cheallaigh
Part I. Images of the Flâneuse: Mediatic Representations of Women’s Relationship to the City
Chapter 1: A City for Young Ladies: The Parisian Flâneuse of the Journal des Demoiselles - Lucie Roussel Richard
Chapter 2: Unfolding the Domestic Interior: Women, Newspapers and the Nineteenth-Century City - Kathryn Brown
Chapter 3: Agnès Varda in Paris: The Urban Gaze of the Female Film-maker in Three Short Films - Jennifer Wallace
Chapter 4: Imagining on the Outskirts of the City: Duras’s Le Camion and the marcheuse - Sarah Cooper
Part II. From the Periphery to the Centre: Marginalised Re-Inscriptions of the Urban
Chapter 5: Morphologies of Becoming: Dehumanisation and Dandyism in Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin - Marina Starik
Chapter 6: Towards a Globalised Banlieue? Resilience through Literature in Three Narratives of the ‘Ultraperiphery’ - Nathalie Ségeral
Chapter 7: Marriage, Pregnancy and the City in Marie Darrieussecq’s Le Pays - Sonja Stojanovic
Chapter 8: Viewing the Algerian Cityscape in Nina Bouraoui’s La Voyeuse interdite and Leïla Sebbar’s ‘La Jeune Fille au balcon’ - Siobhán McIlvanney and Gillian Ni Cheallaigh
Part III. Gendered Spaces, Gendered Places: The Feminisation of the City Environment
Chapter 9: ‘For Their Trouble and Labour’. Women’s Work Reconsidered in Late Medieval Amiens - Julie Pilorget
Chapter 10: City, War and Politicisation in Journal à quatre mains by Benoîte and Flora Groult - Imogen Long
Chapter 11: C’est l’endroit qui nous a faits ainsi: Place, Gender and Belonging in Nathacha Appanah’s Blue Bay Palace and Ananda Devi’s Ève de ses décombres - Julia Waters
Chapter 12: Gendered Spaces of Ageing: The Liberations and Limitations of Urban Space in Annie Ernaux and Nancy Huston - Kate Averis
Index

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• European
• French
• France

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 15 mai 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786834348
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE STUDIES
Women and the City in French Literature and Culture
Series Editors
Hanna Diamond (Cardiff University) Claire Gorrara (Cardiff University)
Editorial Board
Kate Averis (Universidad de Antioquia) Natalie Edwards (University of Adelaide) Kate Griffiths (Cardiff University) Simon Kemp (University of Oxford) Margaret Majumdar (University of Portsmouth) Debarati Sanyal (University of California, Berkeley) Maxim Silverman (University of Leeds)
Other titles in the series
Jonathan Lewis, The Algerian War in French/ Algerian Writing: Literary Sites of Memory Helena Chadderton and Angela Kimyongür (eds), Engagement in Twenty-first-Century French and Francophone Culture: Countering Crises Kate Averis and Isabel Hollis-Touré (eds), Exiles, Travellers and Vagabonds: Rethinking Mobility in Francophone Women’s Writing (2016) David A. Pettersen, Americanism, Media and the Politics of Culture in 1930s France (2016) Amaleena Damlé and Gill Rye (eds), Women’s Writing in Twenty-First-Century France: Life as Literature (2013) Fiona Barclay (ed.), France’s Colonial Legacies: Memory, Identity and Narrative (2013) Jonathan Ervine, Cinema and the Republic: Filming on the margins in contemporary France (2013) Kate Griffiths and Andrew Watts, Adapting Nineteenth-Century France: Literature in Film, Theatre, Television, Radio and Print (2013) Ceri Morgan, Mindscapes of Montréal: Québec’s urban novel, 1950–2005 (2012)
FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE STUDIES
Women and the City in French Literature and Culture
Reconfiguring the Feminine in the Urban Environment
Edited by
SIOBHÁN McILVANNEY AND GILLIAN NI CHEALLAIGH
© The Contributors, 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to The University of Wales Press, University Registry, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3NS
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN
978-1-78683-432-4
eISBN
978-1-78683-434-8
The right of the Contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77, 78 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Cover image: Gaston Lachaise, Standing Woman (1932). By permission Panther Media GmbH/Alamy Stock Photo.
Contents

Series Editors’ Preface
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Siobhán McIlvanney and Gillian Ni Cheallaigh
Part I. Images of the Flâneuse: Mediatic Representations of Women’s Relationship to the City
Chapter 1: A City for Young Ladies: The Parisian Flâneuse of the Journal des Demoiselles Lucie Roussel Richard
Chapter 2: Unfolding the Domestic Interior: Women, Newspapers and the Nineteenth-Century City Kathryn Brown
Chapter 3: Agnès Varda in Paris: The Urban Gaze of the Female Film-maker in Three Short Films Jennifer Wallace
Chapter 4: Imagining on the Outskirts of the City: Duras’s Le Camion and the marcheuse Sarah Cooper
Part II. From the Periphery to the Centre: Marginalised Re-inscriptions of the Urban
Chapter 5: Morphologies of Becoming: Dehumanisation and Dandyism in Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin Marina Starik
Chapter 6: Towards a Globalised Banlieue ? Resilience through Literature in Three Narratives of the ‘Ultraperiphery’ Nathalie Ségeral
Chapter 7: Marriage, Pregnancy and the City in Marie Darrieussecq’s Le Pays Sonja Stojanovic
Chapter 8: Viewing the Algerian Cityscape in Nina Bouraoui’s La Voyeuse interdite and Leïla Sebbar’s ‘La Jeune Fille au balcon’ Siobhán McIlvanney and Gillian Ni Cheallaigh
Part III. Gendered Spaces, Gendered Places: The Feminisation of the City Environment
Chapter 9: ‘For Their Trouble and Labour’: Women’s Work Reconsidered in Late Medieval Amiens Julie Pilorget
Chapter 10: City, War and Politicisation in Journal à quatre mains by Benoîte and Flora Groult Imogen Long
Chapter 11: C’est l’endroit qui nous a faits ainsi : Place, Gender and Belonging in Nathacha Appanah’s Blue Bay Palace and Ananda Devi’s Ève de ses décombres Julia Waters
Chapter 12: Gendered Spaces of Ageing: The Liberations and Limitations of Urban Space in Annie Ernaux and Nancy Huston Kate Averis
Notes & Works Cited
Series Editors’ Preface

This series showcases the work of new and established scholars working within the fields of French and francophone studies. It publishes introductory texts aimed at a student readership, as well as research-orientated monographs at the cutting edge of their discipline area. The series aims to highlight shifting patterns of research in French and francophone studies, to re-evaluate traditional representations of French and francophone identities and to encourage the exchange of ideas and perspectives across a wide range of discipline areas. The emphasis throughout the series will be on the ways in which French and francophone communities across the world are evolving into the twenty-first century.
Hanna Diamond and Claire Gorrara
List of Illustrations

Figure 2.1: Mary Cassatt, Lydia Reading the Morning Paper (No. 1) (Woman Reading) , 1878–9, oil on canvas, 81.28 × 59.69 cm. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska. Museum purchase, Joslyn Endowment Fund, 1943.38.
Figure 2.2: James Tissot, Hide and Seek , c. 1877, oil on wood, 73.4 × 53.9 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Chester Dale Fund, 1978.47.1. Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Figure 2.3: Michel Simonidy, Le Figaro . Poster (colour lithograph on paper), before 1903, 120 × 81 cm. Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, Plandiura Collection, 000127–C. © Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona 2018. Photo: Calveras\ Mérida\Sagristà.
Figure 2.4: Édouard Vuillard, The Newspaper , c. 1896–8, oil on cardboard, 32.38 × 53.34 cm. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., acquired 1929. Image courtesy of Bridgeman Images.
Figure 3.1: An elderly woman walks up the rue Mouffetard in the rain on market day in Agnès Varda’s L’Opéra-Mouffe.
Figure 3.2: Cleaning ‘la dame au sac’ on the rue Turbigo in Agnès Varda’s Les Dites cariatides.
Figure 3.3: ‘Give the Lion of Belfort a big bone to gnaw and turn him towards the West’ – Breton’s wish is fulfilled by Varda in Agnès Varda’s Le Lion volatil .
Notes on Contributors

Kate Averis teaches European literatures at the Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia. Her research lies in the fields of contemporary literatures in French and Spanish, and in particular, women’s writing, transnational mobility and cultures, ageing studies, and feminisms. She is the author of Exile and Nomadism in French and Hispanic Women’s Writing (Oxford: Legenda, 2014) and co-editor of Exiles, Travellers and Vagabonds: Rethinking Mobility in Francophone Women’s Writing (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016). She is currently working on research projects on francophone women’s writing of female ageing, and transnational women’s writing in the Americas.
Kathryn Brown is a specialist in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French art and literature. Her books include Women Readers in French Painting 1870–1890 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), Matisse’s Poets: Critical Performance in the Artist’s Book (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) and (as editor and contributor) The Art Book Tradition in Twentieth-Century Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), Interactive Contemporary Art: Participation in Practice (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014) and Perspectives on Degas (London: Routledge, 2016). She is a lecturer in art history at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom and is the series editor of Contextualizing Art Markets for Bloomsbury Academic.
Sarah Cooper is Professor of Film Studies at King’s College London. Her books include Selfless Cinema?: Ethics and French Documentary (Oxford: Legenda, 2006), Chris Marker (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008) and The Soul of Film Theory (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). She has also edited a special issue of the journal Film-Philosophy , ‘The Occluded Relation: Levinas and Cinema’ (vol. 11, no. 2, 2007). She is currently writing a book on film and the imagination.
Siobhán McIlvanney is Reader in French and Francophone Women’s Writing at King’s College London. She has published extensively on French and francophone women’s writing and on the origins of the French women’s press. Her most recent publications include a chapter on the pathologisation of the maternal in paradigms of anorexia in French women’s writing in Starvation, Food Obsession and Identity: Eating Disorders in Contemporary Women’s Writing , published in 2018, and a journal article comparing Simone de Beauvoir’s theoretical and filmic representations of ageing, in the Journal of Romance Studies in 2017. She has a recent monograph, Figurations of the Feminine in the Early French Women’s Press, 1758–1848 published by Liverpool University Press in 2019.
Gillian Ni Cheallaigh was awarded her PhD in French literature in 2015 from King’s College London, where she lectured in French women’s writing, francophone literature and twentieth-century thought. Her thesis is a diachronic examination of the figure of the madwoman in women-authored novels in French. Publications include Quand la folie parle: The Dialectic Effect of Madness in F