Textual Transvestism: (Re)Visions of Heloise (17th-18th-Centuries)

Erscheinungsjahr 2014
ISBN: 978-90-420-3905-6
Verlag: Brill | Rodopi

Buch, Englisch, Band 398, 394 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 604 g

Reihe: Faux Titre

Textual Transvestism analyzes the flourishing of imitative versions of Heloise’s and Abelard’s love correspondence in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Current theoretical approaches on epistolarity, narratology, cultural, feminist and gender studies have been used to focus on the various transformations (rewriting, adapting, veiling, fragmenting) of Heloise’s epistles, mainly in the hands of male writers. I employ close textual analysis to investigate how the multiple (re)visions of her epistolary discourse and persona over two hundred years might have been indicative of, and helped construct, ideological changes in expectations concerning the role of women. The scope of this study is relevant, but not limited, to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French studies, especially since it explores contemporary cultural issues such as sexual discourse and gender construction throughout the nine chapters. In an age where women’s roles are shifting constantly, this project is especially germane because it traces historical roots of gender redefinition within French culture.

Nancy Arenberg is an Associate Professor at the University of Arkansas. She specializes in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century epistolary literature and theory. Her published work includes articles in national and international journals on French epistolary texts and Francophone women writers. Nancy Arenberg’s current research deals mainly with Algerian women writers and Jewish transnational authors, focusing on memory, gender and sexual identity issues.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literatursoziologie, Gender Studies
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturkritik: Hermeneutik und Interpretation
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Romanische Literaturen Französische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Rezeption, literarische Einflüsse und Beziehungen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction – Writing Love: The Origins of the Letter Novel in France

1. Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum
2. The Genesis of the Love Letter
3. Grenaille’s Eloize as “La Magdalene Française”
4. Bussy Rabutin’s Letters
5. Fictional Transformation of the Lovers
6. Dom Gervaise’s Repentant Translation of Heloise and Abelard
7. The Hysterical and Pastoral Heloise
8. Julie or the Devout Heloise
9. Learned Heloise Regained
10 Textual Transvestism
Epilogue: The Revival of Heloise in Popular Culture

Bibliography
Index