Includes transcriptions of 19 letters (both the French originals and English translations) discussed in the book and written by Riccoboni between 1757 and 1786 to de Maillebois, Diderot, his son-in-law de Vandeul, Antonio Carara, Laclos, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, journal editors Louis de Boissy, Pierre Antoine de la Place, and Jean François de Bastide, her publisher Denis Humblot, Philip Thicknesse and David Garrick. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary:
"Marie Jeanne Riccoboni's Epistolary Feminism: Fact, Fiction, and Voice argues that Riccoboni is among the most significant women writers of the French Enlightenment due to her "epistolary feminism". Locating its source in her first novel Lettres de Mistriss Fanni Butlerd (1757), between fact and fiction, public and private, Marijn S. Kaplan provides new evidence supporting both the novel's autobiography theory and de Maillebois hypothesis. Kaplan then traces how Riccoboni progressively develops a proto-feminist poetics of voice in her epistolary fiction, empowering women to resist patriarchal efforts to silence and appropriate them, which culminates in her final novel Lettres de Milord Rivers (1777). In nineteen relatively unknown letters (included, with translations) written over three decades to her publisher Humblot, several editors, Diderot, Laclos, Philip Thicknesse etc., Riccoboni is shown similarly to defend her oeuvre, her reputation, and her authority as a woman (writer), refusing to be manipulated and silenced by men."-- Provided by publisher.
Series:
Routledge studies in eighteenth-century literature
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.