Post-War Jewish Women's Writing in French

As anglophone-based French studies increasingly open up to the purviews and agendas of cultural studies, including those of gender and ethnicity, this essay seeks to remedy a significant gap in that evolution. Beginning with broad synopsis and then moving into closer analysis of individual texts, it plots certain salient coordinates within French-language Jewish women's writing of the post-war period. Particular attention is paid to four broadly representative writers: two authors who, on the whole, appear to exemplify the more traditional concerns of the second generation (Elisabeth Gilles and Myriam Anissimov), and two who, in contrast, exemplify a post-1968 episteme which is informed by, though not reduced to, gendered structures of experience (Eliette Abécassis and Karine Tuil).