Le Féminin en Orient et en Occident, du Moyen Âge à nos jours: Mythes et réalités ed. by Marie-Françoise Bosquet and Chantale Meure (review)

Several comparative studies of representations of "the feminine" have appeared in recent years, including two similar titles in French, Le Féminin en miroir entre Orient et Occident, ed. Jamal-Eddine El Hani and Isabelle Krier (2005), and Femmes d'Orient, femmes d'Occident, ed. Colette Dumas and Nathalie Bertrand (2007). What distinguishes the collection under review here is its vast range across time, space, and literary languages. The unusual scope is made possible in part by the location of the conference that spawned the book: the Indian Ocean island of Réunion. As the editors explain, the geographical object of their study, "cet Orient à la fois réalité et mythe," is here understood in its "sens le plus extensif en privilégiant l'hémisphere sud et la zone de l'océan Indien" (8). This allows for a broader exploration of questions typically restricted to the Mediterranean—for example, in French encounters with North Africa. This expansion comes at price, evident in the book's cumbersome title and its unwieldy thematic structure. With 29 short essays on topics ranging from a seventeenth-century voyage aux Indes orientales to twentieth-century Japanese women, from an eleventh-century Muslim poetess to late twentieth-century China, and from Indian theatrical traditions dating to the seventeenth century to twentieth-century South African and American writings—with biblical material thrown in for good measure—sustained argument is impossible. Even the silent conclusions that might be drawn from a chronological or geographical movement are foreclosed, as the work moves instead from part 1, "Mirages du féminin/mirages de l'Orient et démystification" towards part 3, "Frontières du féminin entre Orient et Occident."

Yet the refusal to move on—or to cordon off parts of the East or West—creates a wealth of openings, as it launches new conversations. The editors emphasize four major topics at the heart of the collection. First is the study of comparative representations of the "feminine" in the East and the West. (What is the history of these representations?) Second is the related history of the idea of female freedom and power as an index of the differences between civilizations. For Diderot, to take only one example, women were "autant de thermomètres des moindres vicissitudes des moeurs et des usages" (quoted on pages 9-10). Third, the collection explores the overlapping "mysteries" of women (or "the feminine") and the Orient, asking what this enigma reveals about those who develop it (such as fears of androgyny). Fourth, the contributors ask how female and "Eastern" writers take up these topoi and materials, and to what effect. (This is described as an effort to identify an "écriture-femme" and "écriture orientale" on page 11.) All of these questions have a clear significance for eighteenth-century studies; it should come as no surprise that one-third of the essays are devoted to materials from this century.

Three chapters in particular explore the "feminine" in eighteenth-century French fiction, with an eye not only for its projections upon the East but also for its adoption of Eastern models or materials. Jean-François Perrin's "Le Complexe de Tirésias," for example, examines eighteenth-century French imitations and adaptations of the framing-story structure in Mille et une nuits and other translated Eastern collections. His thoughtful exploration of Mille et un jours, Aventures du mandarin Fum-Hoam, Le Sopha, Montesquieu's Histoire véritable, and Diderot's Bijoux indiscrets expands our understanding of the eighteenth-century "fantasme du sérail" by tracing "l'inquiétude de la différence sexuelle telle qu'elle se trouve figurée dans certains contes orientaux" (83, 85). Similarly, Guilhem Armand's essay on L...