Rococo Fiction in France reconfigures the history of the "long eighteenth century" by revealing the rococo as a literary phenomenon that characterized a range of experimental texts from the end of the French Renaissance to the eve of the French Revolution. Tracing the literary rococo's evolution from the late 1500s to the early 1700s, and exploring its radicalization during the 1670s, '80s, and '90s, Allison Stedman unearths the seventeenth century rococo's counter-vision for the trajectory of the French monarchy and the dawn of the French Enlightenment. The first part of the study investigates the relationship between Montaigne's philosophy of literary production and those of early seventeenth-century "table-talk" novelists, libertine writers, and playwrights involved in the quarrel over Corneille's play Le Cid. She thus establishes the existence of a rococo philosophy of literary production whose goal was to innovate, to bring pleasure, and to create communities. The second part of the study explores the impact that the Duchess de Montpensier's literary portrait galleries, Jean Donneau de Vis 's periodical the Mercure Galant, and other forms of rococo literary production--by such authors as Charles Sorel, Alcide de Saint-Maurice, J.N. de Parvial and Jean de Pr chac--had in the creation of a textually mediated social sphere that served as the foundation of the publicly critical culture of the French Enlightenment. The study concludes with an investigation of the influx of salon sociability into the textually mediated social sphere during the 1690s. Stedman examines the role of interpolated literary fairy tales, proverb plays and other rococo publication strategies--in such late seventeenth-century women writers as d'Aulnoy, Lh ritier, Murat, and Durand--in transfiguring the salon from an exclusive social circle mediated by physical presence to an inclusive social diaspora mediated by texts. Rococo Fiction in France challenges established views of early modern French literary history and discusses a range of little known works in a generous and engaging manner.

Analyzing four best-selling novels - by both women and men - written in the feminine voice, this book traces how the creation of women-centered salons and the emergence of a feminine poetic style engendered a new type of literature in eighteenth-century France. The author argues that writing in a female voice allowed writers of both sexes to break with classical notions of literature and style, so that they could create a modern sensibility that appealed to a larger reading public, and gave them scope to innovate with style and form. Wolfgang brings to light how the 'female voice' in literature came to embody the language of sociability, but also allowed writers to explore the domain of inter-subjectivity, while creating new bonds between writers and the reading public. Through examination of Marivaux's La Vie de Marianne, Graffigny's Lettres d'une Péruvienne, Riccoboni's Lettres de Mistriss Fanni Butlerd, and Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses, she shows that in France, this modern 'feminine' sensibility turned the least prestigious of literary genres - the novel - into the most compelling and innovative literary form of the eighteenth century. Emphasizing how the narratives analyzed here refashioned the French literary world through their linguistic innovation and expression of new forms of subjectivity, this study claims an important role for feminine-voice narratives in shaping the field of eighteenth-century literature.

In Women and Curiosity in Early Modern England and France, the rehabilitation of female curiosity between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries is thoroughly investigated for the first time, in a comparative perspective that confronts two epistemological and religious traditions. In the context of the early modern blooming “culture of curiosity”, women’s desire for knowledge made them both curious subjects and curious objects, a double relation to curiosity that is meticulously inquired into by the authors in this volume. The social, literary, theological and philosophical dimensions of women’s persistent association with curiosity offer a rich contribution to cultural history.

First Published in 1997. North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary was created to fill a gap of there being a comprehensive reference work like this available, even though the bibliography in English on various aspects of the history of women artists has grown exponentially during the past ten years. As researchers, the editors have been frustrated many times by being unable to locate basic information about many of the artists included in this volume—especially those working outside the United States. This leads directly to another reason for producing this particular kind of reference book—to try and create a better understanding between and among the artists and art audiences in these countries.

Illustrates a wide range of historical garments, underwear, shoes and fashion accessories dating from the eighteenth century to the present day.

French fashions from 1640–1775, depicted in 45 full-page black-and-white illustrations. Portraits of farmers, street vendors, and aristocrats, all with informative captions.

Focusing on images of or produced by nineteenth-century European women, this volume explores genteel femininity as resistant to easy codification vis-à-vis the public. Attending to various iterations of the public as space, sphere and discourse, sixteen essays challenge the false binary construct that has held the public as the sole preserve of prosperous men. By considering works in a range of media by an array of canonical and understudied women artists, they demonstrate that definitions of both femininity and the public were mutually defining and constantly shifting.

Focusing on images of or produced by well-to-do nineteenth-century European women, this volume explores genteel femininity as resistant to easy codification vis-?is the public. Attending to various iterations of the public as space, sphere and discourse, sixteen essays challenge the false binary construct that has held the public as the sole preserve of prosperous men. By contrast, the essays collected in Women, Femininity and Public Space in European Visual Culture, 1789-1914 demonstrate that definitions of both femininity and the public were mutually defining and constantly shifting. In examining the relationship between affluent women, femininity and the public, the essays gathered here consider works by an array of artists that includes canonical ones such as Mary Cassatt and Fran?s G?rd as well as understudied women artists including Louise Abb? and Broncia Koller. The essays also consider works in a range of media from fashion prints and paintings to private journals and architectural designs, facilitating an analysis of femininity in public across the cultural production of the period. Various European centers, including Madrid, Florence, Paris, Brittany, Berlin and London, emerge as crucial sites of production for genteel femininity, providing a long-overdue rethinking of modern femininity in the public sphere.