Dynamics of Gender in Early Modern France

In its six case studies The Dynamics of Gender in Early Modern France works out a model for (early modern) gender which is articulated in the introduction. The book comprises essays on the construction of women: three in texts by male and three by female writers including Racine Fénelon Poulain de la Barre in the first part; La Guette La Fayette and Sévigné in the second. These studies thus also take up different genres: satire tragedy and treatise; memoir novella and letter-writing. Since gender is a relational construct each chapter considers as well specific textual and contextual representations of men. In every instance Stanton looks for signs of conformity to-and deviations from-normative gender scripts. The Dynamics of Gender adds a new dimension to early modern French literary and cultural studies: it incorporates a dynamic (shifting) theory of gender and it engages both contemporary critical theory and literary historical readings of primary texts and established concepts in the field. This book emphasizes the central importance of historical context and close reading from a feminist perspective which it also interrogates as a practice. The Afterword examines some of the meanings of reading-as-a-feminist.