Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French
- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Conventions
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Beginnings: From the Late Medieval to Madame de Lafayette
- Part II The Eighteenth Century: Learning, Letters, Libertinage
- Part III After the Revolution: The Novel in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Part IV From Naturalism to the Nouveau Roman
- Part V Fictions of the Fifth Republic: From de Gaulle to the Internet Age
- 30 Oulipo, Experiment and the Novel
- 31 Theories of the Novel
- 32 The Caribbean Novel in French, 1958–2016
- 33 The North African Novel in French
- 34 Sub-Saharan Africa and the Novel in French
- 35 The Translingual Novel in French
- 36 Literary Prizes
- 37 Autofiction: Writing Lives
- 38 Trends in the Novel in French after 2000
- 39 Contemporary Women’s Writing in French
- 40 The Novel in French and the Internet
- Index
- References
39 - Contemporary Women’s Writing in French
from Part V - Fictions of the Fifth Republic: From de Gaulle to the Internet Age
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2021
- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French
- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Conventions
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Beginnings: From the Late Medieval to Madame de Lafayette
- Part II The Eighteenth Century: Learning, Letters, Libertinage
- Part III After the Revolution: The Novel in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Part IV From Naturalism to the Nouveau Roman
- Part V Fictions of the Fifth Republic: From de Gaulle to the Internet Age
- 30 Oulipo, Experiment and the Novel
- 31 Theories of the Novel
- 32 The Caribbean Novel in French, 1958–2016
- 33 The North African Novel in French
- 34 Sub-Saharan Africa and the Novel in French
- 35 The Translingual Novel in French
- 36 Literary Prizes
- 37 Autofiction: Writing Lives
- 38 Trends in the Novel in French after 2000
- 39 Contemporary Women’s Writing in French
- 40 The Novel in French and the Internet
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter considers the contemporary novel in French within the context of the broadly defined field of women’s writing, a diverse, engaged and vibrant space where innovative literary forms are mobilised in ways that continue to stretch the possibilities and meanings of female experience. Exploring an array of texts by award-winning, bestselling and emerging novelists, the chapter discusses three key thematic areas. In the first part, it considers the intimacy long associated with women’s writing, showing how recent novels have tended to move beyond the tropes of sentimental romance, imagining instead a distinct, female-focused erotics, or otherwise engaging themes of love with wider, philosophical and political concerns. In the second part, the chapter looks at representations of the family, focusing on the turbulent, transformative times of adolescence, on perspectives on mothering, and on new patterns of kinship, that create new dialogues surrounding the cultural ideals and social pressures embroiled within the family in twenty-first-century France. In the final section, the chapter draws attention to the intersectional conversations in recent women’s writing in French between feminist concerns, the representation of queer and trans subjectivities, social inequalities, immigration and race relations.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French , pp. 706 - 723Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021