Gendered Lyric: Subjectivity and Difference in Nineteenth-Century French Poetry

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. However, feminist.scholars of medieval and Renaissance French poetry have recently begun to address questions of gender. See Krueger, Women Readers and the Ideology ofGender in Old French Verse Ronuince .(1993); Jones, The Currency of Eros: Women's Love Lytic in· Europe, 1540-1620 (1990). And prominent women poets of the pre-novel era (Marie de France, Christine de Pizan, Louise Labe) have attracted more attention than their modern peers. 2. See Schor, George Sand and Idealism (1993) and Breaking the Chain: Women, Theory, and French Realist Fiction (1985); Dejean, Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins ofthe Novel in France (1991); N. K. Miller, Subject to Change: Reading Feminist Writing (1988) and The Heroine's Text: Readings in the French and English Novel, 17221782 (1980); See also: Stewart, Gynographs: French Novels by Women ofthe Late Eighteenth Century (1993); Danahy, The Feminization ofthe Novel (1991); Kamuf, Fictions ofFeminine Desire (1982). 3. In addition to Schor's work, studies focusing specifically on nineteenth -century narrative fiction include most recently: Miller Frank, The Mechanical Song: Women, Voice, and the Artificial in Nineteenth-Century French Narrative (1995); Beizer, Ventriloquized Bodies: Narratives of Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century France (1994); Waller, The Male Malady: Fictions of Impotence in the French Romantic Novel (1993); WaeltiWalters , Feminist Novels ofthe Belle Epoque (1990); Kelly, Fictlonal Genders: Role and Representation in Nineteenth-Century French Narrative (1989). This list is by no means exhaustive. ' 4. Between Gilbert and Gubar in 1979 and Prins and Shreiber in 1997, important studies include: Keller and Miller, eds., Feminist Measures: Soundings in Poetry and Theory (1994); Montefiore, Feminism and Poetry (1987); Ostriker, Stealing the Language: The Emergence ofWomen 's Poetry in America (1986); Middlebrook and Yalom, eds.,Coming to Light: American Women Poets ofthe Twentieth Century (1985); Juhasz, Feminist Critics Read Emily Dickinson (1983); Homans, Women Writers and Poetic Identity (1980). For a more complete bibliography, see Prins and Shreiber. S. For example, see articles by Danahy, Greenberg, Johnson, Paliyenko , and Plante. 6. Stanton points to Woolf's assertion: "all the older form~ of literature were hardened and set by the time she became a writer. The novel alone was young enough to be soft in her hands" (xvi). 7. In 1880, the CamilleSee law established girls' schools; the law ,of June 16, 1881, mandated free education; and the law of March 28, 1882, made primary education obligatory. 8. In 1924, education for both sexes finally became equal under the law, permitting girls to prepare for the baccalaureat. ,281 Notes to Pages 3-13 9. See Danahy's article "Marceline Desbordes-Valmore et la fraternite des poetes." 10. See Sullerot, Histoire de la presse feminine en France. 11 •.Montefiore studies such unrecognized Romanticism in her chapter by this name (Feminism and Poetry 8-13). 12. For an intelligent and detailed study of this question, see Wesling and Slawek, Literary Voice (1995). Smith, Discerning the Subject (1988), offers a broader overview oftheories ofsubjectivity across the disciplines. 13. Benveniste, Problemes de linguistique genhale; see in particular the chapters "De la subjectivite dans Ie langage" (1:- 258-66) and "La nature des pronoms" (1: 251-57). See also Kerbrat-Orecchioni, L'enonciation de la subjectivite dans Ie langage. 14. Benveniste elaborates on the nonpersonhood of the third-person pronoun, whose qualities include: "1) de se combiner avec n'.importe quelle reference d'object; 2) de n'etre jamais reflexive de l'instance de discours; 3) de comporter un nombre assez grand de variantes pronominales ou demonstratives; 4) de n'etre pas compatible avec Ie paradigme des termes referentiels tels que ici, 'maintenant, etc." (1: 256-57). 15. Genette: Figures /II. Todorov: Les genres du disc6urs. For an excellent example of fentinist narratology, see Lanser's book on the femaleauthored novel in England, France, and the US: Fictions ofAuthority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice. 16. Rabate suggests that such a meeting is overdue: "A la suite des analyses de Genette, les etudes narratologiques se sont developpees et raffinees apartir des distinctions entre auteur, narrateur et personnage. [...] D'une facron generale, l'importance accrue des concepts empruntes ala pragmatique et ala linguistique de I'enonciation ne parait pas avoir touche aussi largement Ie champ de la poesie" (6). The essays of this fine volume do much to fill gaps in the study of lyric subjectivity. 17. See in particular Meschonnic, Critique du rythme: Anthropologie historique du langage. Wesling andSlawek as well as Bedetti provide useful presentations and analyses ofMeschonnic's extensive work. Walter Ong (The Presence ofthe...