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Through the Reading Glass , livre ebook

State University of New York Press - Suellen Diaconoff

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278 pages

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2005 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

Through the Reading Glass explores the practices and protocols that surrounded women's reading in eighteenth-century France. Looking at texts as various as fairy tales, memoirs, historical romances, short stories, love letters, novels, and the pages of the new female periodical press, Suellen Diaconoff shows how a reading culture, one in which books, sex, and acts of reading were richly and evocatively intertwined, was constructed for and by women. Diaconoff proposes that the underlying discourse of virtue found in women's work was both an empowering strategy, intended to create new kinds of responsible and not merely responsive readers, and an integral part of the conviction that domestic reading does not have to be trivial.

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Reading Glass and the Politics of Virtue

1. Female Readers and l'espace du livre: A Quiet Revolution

2. Autobiography and Rereading
Manon Roland, 17541793

3. The Romance as Transformative Reading
Félicité de Genlis, 17461830

4. The Project of Desire: Constructing Reader and Reading
Isabelle de Charrière, 17401805

5. Reading Rape in the Culture Wars of the Eighteenth Century
Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni, 17131792

6. Books, Sex, and Reading the Fairy Tale
Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, 16851755
Jeanne Leprince de Beaumont, 17111780

7. The Periodical Print Press for Women: An Enlightenment Forum for Females

Conclusion: The "Other" Revolution

Notes

Bibliography

Sujets

18th century

France

Informations

Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	01 février 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780791483398
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	8 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1648€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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through the reading glass

WOMEN, BOOKS, AND SEX IN THE FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENT

SU E L L E N DI A C O N O F F

THROUGH THE READING GLASS

SUNYSERIESIN FEMINIST CRITICISMAND THEORY

Michelle A. Massé, editor

THROUGH THE READING GLASS

Women, Books, and Sex in the French Enlightenment

suellen diaconoff

State University of New York Press

cover art: Louis-Léopold Boilly,A Young Painter and His Model, ca. 1788–1792, printed with permission from Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts.

Published by S U N Y P , A TATE NIVERSITY OF EW ORK RESS LBANY

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address the State University of New York Press, 194 Washington Avenue, Suite 305, Albany, NY 12210-2365

Production, Laurie Searl Marketing, Fran Keneston

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Diaconoff, Suellen. Through the reading glass : women, books, and sex in the French Enlightenment / Suellen Diaconoff. p. cm. — (SUNY series in feminist criticism and theory) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-6421-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-6422-9 (paperback : alk. paper) 1. French literature—18th century—History and criticism. 2. French literature—Women authors—History and criticism. 3. Women—Books and reading—France—History—18th century. 4. Women and literature—France—History—18th century. I. Title. II. Series.

PQ265.D52 2005 028'.9'0820944—dc22

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2004015116

Acknowledgments

CONTENTS

Introduction: The Reading Glass and the Politics of Virtue

Female Readers andl’espace du livre: A Quiet Revolution

Autobiography and Rereading: Manon Roland, 1754–1793

The Romance as Transformative Reading:

Félicité de Genlis, 1746–1830

The Project of Desire: Constructing Reader and

Readings: Isabelle de Charrière, 1740–1805

Reading Rape in the Culture Wars of the Eighteenth Century: Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni, 1713–1792

vii

101

127

CONTENTS

Books, Sex, and Reading in the Fairy Tale:

Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, 1685–1755,

Jeanne Leprince de Beaumont, 1711–1780

The Periodical Print Press for Women:

An Enlightenment Forum for Females

Conclusion: The “Other” Revolution

Notes

Bibliography

Index

151

171

205

211

249

259

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In addition to all the people with whom I am not personally acquainted but who helped make this book come to pass—writers and critics, both past and present, librarians, and museum personnel—I would especially like to offer sincere thanks to the following: Jennifer Voter,secrétaire extraordinaire; Andrea Breau and Maria Thompson, research assistants; Peggy Mencham, Colby College reference librarian; Margaret Erickson, Colby College art librarian. Over the years it took to complete this book, my work has been sup-ported by research and travel grants from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities and from Colby College to conduct research in the libraries of the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal in Paris. I am grateful to the following museums and collections for granting permission to reproduce the images in this book: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; Wallraf-Richartz-Museum and the Rheinisches Bildarchiv in Cologne, Germany; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts; Wrightsman Collection, New York; Frick Collection, New York; Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, New York; Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, Germany; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio. Thanks to financial support from the Colby College Humanities Division, I have been able to include these illustrations. Finally, I dedicate this book to my parents, who taught me through example the pleasures of both the book and of reading.

vii

INTRODUCTION

THE READING GLASS AND THE POLITICS OF VIRTUE

“Does she read, your little granddaughter, Mlle Rotisset?”

“Reading is her greatest pleasure. She spends some time reading every day.”

“Oh! I can see that; but take care that she does not become a scholar. That would be a thousand pities.” —Manon Roland,Mémoires

We have not often recognized that it is as lovers of print culture and knowl-edge that eighteenth-century women participated in and contributed to the intellectual vitality of the Enlightenment. As a result, the story of their relationship to books and the development of a reading culture for their sex has received relatively little attention despite its potential to reveal the ways in which women envisioned the remaking of society. For reading, it has been said, is at the beginning of the social contract, and at no time is such an affirmation more important than in a century that characterized itself as devoted to the goals of universal enlightenment. As the single most impor-tant sign of a literate society, reading is an essential rite of passage by which people create links with one another and by which individuals develop a sense of cumulative time. It is the primary skill required in the extension of literacy within a culture and exchange between cultures, and it is the prin-cipal yardstick by which to measure the intellectual progress of a society and specific groups—such as women—within that society. A veritable thematic structure of Manon Roland’sMémoires, reading is the narrative center post of her text, as of her life. From earliest childhood, 1

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