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Isabelle de Charrière, formerly best known for her friendship with James Boswell and Benjamin Constant, is now recognised as one of the most fascinating literary figures of her time, a brilliant letter-writer and gifted novelist. Cecil Courney's biography chronicles her life in a lively, comprehensive and scholarly fashion and makes full use of the original sources, notably Belle's extensive correspondence with many of the leading figures of her time. Part one covers the first thirty years of Belle de Zuylen's life from her birth in 1740 into the sheltered, leisurely and elegant milieu of an old-established Dutch aristocratic family. Her early intellectual development leads her to challenge...
Recense les contributions des conférenciers lors du congrès international organisé à l'Unverisité d'Utrech en avril 2005 qui commémore le bicentenaire de la mort d'Isabelle de Charrrière.
Isabelle de Charri�re �pouse, � l'�ge de 30 ans, l'ancien pr�cepteur de ses fr�res, Charles-Emmanuel de Charri�re de Penthaz, et entame v�ritablement sa carri�re d'�crivaine, produisant une abondante correspondance, des pamphlets, des contes, des romans, dont les plus notables sont les Lettres neuch�teloises (1783), Lettres �crites de Lausanne (1785).
The novels published by Isabelle de Charrière before the French Revolution offer a perceptive account of the psychology and the social climate of the late eighteenth century. The anti-Freudian psychoanalysis of the neurologist and psychiatrist Heinz Kohut (1913-81) is used in this study as a means of developing an awareness of the position of the fictional characters. Feminist and Freudian readings of Charrière's novels of the 1780s have stressed the 'closed' deterministic atmosphere of contemporary society; this new study emphasises what can be called the 'modern' side of the novels: patriarchal society and individual needs confront each other and allow the relationships to be seen in a new light. By means of Kohut's notion of 'selfobject' a rich insight is gained into the complex relationships described by Isabelle de Charrière.
Isabelle de Charrière (Belle van Zuylen) has been known primarily as a novelist who experimented with narrative techniques to express her concern about the oppression of women in her society. Most scholarship has focused on only a small part of her work, her pre-revolutionary novels. This is one of the first synthetic studies of Charrière's entire oeuvre, and it turns its attention to Charrière's overlooked contribution as an intellectual in the eighteenth-century debate over education. In addition, Letzter analyzes the rhetorical and discursive strategies Charrière employed to insert herself in this debate; a debate from which she was excluded because she was a woman and she was not Fre...
Benjamin Constant is widely regarded as a founding father of modern liberalism. The Cambridge Companion to Constant presents a collection of interpretive essays on the major aspects of his life and work by a panel of international scholars, offering a necessary overview for anyone who wants to better understand this important thinker. Separate sections are devoted to Constant as a political theorist and actor, his work as a social analyst and literary critic, and his accomplishments as a historian of religion. Themes covered range from Constant's views on modern liberty, progress, terror, and individualism, to his ideas on slavery and empire, literature, women, and the nature and importance of religion. The Cambridge Companion to Constant is a convenient and accessible guide to Constant and the most up-to-date scholarship on him.
Marie de France, Mme. De Sävignä, and Mme. De Lafayette achieved international reputations during periods when women in other European countries were able to write only letters, translations, religious tracts, and miscellaneous fragments. There were obstacles, but French women writers were more or less sustained and empowered by the French culture. Often unconventional in their personal lives and occupied with careers besides writing?as educators, painters, actresses, preachers, salon hostesses, labor organizers?these women did not wait for Simone de Beauvoir to tell them to make existential choices and have "projects in the world." French Women Writers describes the lives and careers of f...
Ceci ne sont ni des querelles maritales ni des querelles d'amants. Comment font-elles pour être se vives? J'ai en ceci un air très ridicule, mais tout en le sentant très bien je vais mon chemin et dis ce que je pense... (8 novembre 1794) Il y a dans mon détachement de vous de quoi faire un des plus beaux attachements qu'on voie... (19 mars 1796) Souffrir fait trop de mal. Je semble dire une sotisse, mais non, car le mal que fait la souffrance ne finit pas avec elle. Elle laisse un ébranlement, une irritabilité générale et un certain chagrin sur les dures conditions sous lesquelles nous sommes admis à vivre... (21 mai 1797) Je n'ai jamais été de l'avis de M de Chaillet relativement...
Writing Lives in the Eighteenth Century is a collection of essays on memoir, biography, and autobiography during a formative period for the genre. Employing the methodology William Godwin outlined for novelists of taking material "from all sources, experience, report, and the records of human affairs," each contributor examines within the contexts of their time and historical traditions the anxieties and imperatives of the auto/biographer as she or he shapes material into a legacy.