Les Écrivaines contemporaines et les mythes. Le remembrement au féminin by Metka Zupančič (review)

Metka Zupančič examines how references to and interpretations of myths and mythological female figures factor into ten women writers’ treatment of the process of remembering. Zupančič’s theories are based on the belief that there are mental structures in the human psyche that refer to and rely upon universal archetypes and ancient myths. At the heart of Zupančič’s work lies the concept of remembrement. Traditionally used in agriculture to denote the regrouping of lands, here the word plays a symbolic role and is understood as a process of reassembling fragments of life and of remembering.

Zupančič demonstrates how, in their maturity, all of the examined women writers utilize female archetypes and mythical memory to reconcile, reunify, and reconstruct what absence, defeat, hurt, and separation once dismembered. The writers’ reinterpretation of female myths, Zupančič argues, allows them to reclaim and recast human interdependence, thus stressing remembrement over démembrement or sparagmos, the latter a term used in ancient Greek mythology that literally stands for the tearing apart of a victim’s body. Their overarching objective, according to Zupančič, is a better understanding of both human connectedness and inner connection with the origins of life, the mother’s body. In order to demonstrate the ethical contribution of female literary creativity and wisdom, Zupančič explores how Love, interpreted as the quintessential cohesive force of the cosmos, operates in the writers’ work. By openly declaring that their objective is to find healing and catharsis, the author sustains that these writers have participated in the creation of a new utopic genre that engages with society in order to stir the conscience; their narratives also suggest new ways of interacting, particularly between men and women.

The study is presented in thirteen chapters. The three introductory sections focus on memory and remembrement and each of the following is dedicated to the analysis of a specific writer. Zupančič contextualizes the writers in a very special way by including personal reflections, excerpts from correspondences, and a remarkable number of literary references that demonstrate the resonance of common archetypes across geographical areas and time periods. All of which come together to render the study more captivating, substantive, and unique. In chapter four, Zupančič proposes that the goal of the characters Myriam/Persephone and Mary-Ann/Eurydice in Tunisian writer Souâd Guellouz’s novel Myriam ou le rendez-vous de Beyrouth is to surpass the ego’s barriers and to connect with the inner sacred self. In chapter five, Zupančič reads Fabienne Pasquet’s reinterpretation of the Mary Magdalene archetype in Le récit de Madeleine as a way of questioning, comparing, and contrasting the female and male understanding of both love and fear. In chapter six, according to Zupančič, Quebecois writer France Théoret redefines Athena’s archetype in Une belle éducation by stripping it of its male legacy–Zeus–and by showing Evelyne to be a self-made woman who, in spite of traditional conventions, chooses to educate herself. Chapter seven focuses on Francine d’Amour’s Le retour d’Afrique and the reversal of the Charlotte/Eurydice and Julien/Orpheus paradigm. The references to Egyptian female myths, the author explains, inspire Charlotte to integrate loss into her life. In chapter eight, Louise Dupré’s Ariadne is interpreted as a symbolic entity that accompanies women into the darkest corners of their psyches to help them to confront their fears and to find their most authentic selves. In chapter nine, the bird-woman in Andrée Christensen’s La mémoire de l’aile embodies a variety of mythical concepts and stands as the symbol of women’s liberation and the female yearning for the infinite. Chapter ten honors Belgian Claire Lejeune’s engagement with Québécois feminists as well as her notion of both sorority and the “third woman,” the latter centered on the capacity of inner strength to...