The Forgotten Generation: French Women Writers of the Inter-war Period

Description

As a wave of open misogyny swept through French literature and society in the aftermath of the Great War, a new generation of professional women writers took up pen to redress the situation. They disputed the prescriptive social and cultural roles ascribed to women and proposed inspiring new definitions of womanhood. Many critics today are oblivious to women's literary achievements during this period, which remain subject to severe critical neglect. This book analyzes and challenges the way in which these important women writers have been marginalized in the annals of French literary history and offers fresh readings and reappraisals of their thematically and aesthetically innovative works.

Jennifer E. Milligan Jennifer Milligan,Lecturer at St. John's College, Oxford

"This very readable study not only opens up new paths for reading [...] and for research (the foonotes and bibliography are excellent), but also provides a carefully reseravhed analysis of theprocess of canon compilation, and a well contextualised discussion of the relationship between history, gender and genre." Modern and Contemporary France "definitely a useful critical addition to women's studies and contemporary fictional studies, extending the corpus of primary material for both students and specialists, and full of fascinating details" MLR 'By re-examining women's writing within both social and literary contexts, this study provides fruitful revalorisation of the period, of romance and autobiography, and will allow other researchers to build on well-considered foundations' Forum for Modern Language Studies