Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France - Paperback

by Joan Dejean (Author)

This treatise argues that women writers were the originators of the modern novel in France. It uses the novels of Scudery and Lafayette to illustrate how such works undermined French tradition by suggesting that women had a right to choose their husbands and to lead independent lives.

Back Jacket

In this book, the author argues that women writers were the originators of the modern novel in France. This book gives readers of those novels an understanding of the subversive tradition in which they were created. The author portrays the involvement of women writers in the body politic and in the politics of the body as their struggle for increased control over the plots of their lives and fictions.

Author Biography

Jean DeJean is a Trustee Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Fictions of Sappho (1546-1937) and co-editor, with Nancy Miller of Displacements: Women, Tradition, Literatures in French.