The Ravishment of Persephone

This study delineates a theory of epistolary lyric that refutes historical notions of a <i>siècle sans poésie</i>. Julia De Pree argues that monophonic epistolary texts written during the <i>Ancien Régime</i> both reflect and resist the Classical legacy and at the same time anticipate the nineteenth-century prose poem. De Pree illustrates her theory of epistolary lyric through readings in the historical canon (Montesquieu Diderot Rousseau Laclos) but emphasizes the contributions of the <i>épistolière</i>: Françoise de Graffigny Isabelle de Charrière and Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni. She argues that through their relatively short length their incorporation of blank space and their monophonic voice female-authored letter-texts articulate epistolary lyric at the intersection of narrative theatrical and poetic codes. De Pree concludes that as a plural and protean form epistolary lyric anticipates the so-called poetic revolution(s) that transformed nineteenth-century French lyric.