Figures féminines de l'histoire occidentale dans la littérature française ed. by Mercè Boixareu, Esther Juan-Oliva, et Angela M. Romera-Pintor (review)

This rich collection, mostly the work of professors of French, Comparative Literature, and History at universities in Spain, focuses on the literary fictionalization and reception of Western historical women in French literature. Contributors emphasize those character traits and values that historical women mediate and their connection to the history of mentalités, either through the perpetuation of feminine stereotypes or their subversion. Auto-referential genres such as autobiographies, memoirs, correspondences, and exemplary tales are omitted in favor of those that fictionalize history—novels, tragedies, and historical tales. Part One, on "Genres and Authors," concentrates on the fictional representation of female writers and historical figures from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, such as, for example, Blanche de Castille, Villon's "dames du temps jadis," Diane de Poitiers, Mme Roland, and the heroines of select tragedies and historical tales spanning three centuries. Gender binary and identity play outsized roles, according to the contributors. Women who assumed masculine gendered roles, such as queens and regents, were particularly vulnerable to slander and stereotyping. Eleanor of Aquitaine is glorified or vilified depending on the political agenda of the chronicler or poet. Female political writers are also misrepresented. Olympe de Gouges was cast in the French revolutionary press as insane, conspiring, and a feminist "contre-nature" (180). "Les femmes et le discours scolaire français (1850–1950)" examines how nineteenth-century French educational policy militated against female writers and historical figures: few appear in class anthologies; most are linked to Ancien régime salons and epistolary literature; and they are judged on clichés based on female vices and virtues. Since the 1980s, however, a wave of French revisionist historical writers, influenced by the Annales school, and feminist and gender studies, have rehabilitated their characters: Françoise Chandernagor recasts Mme de Maintenon; Françoise d'Eaubonne redeems the androgynous Christina of Sweden; and Catherine Decours upholds the republican engagement of Charlotte Corday. Part Two, on"Women of Power, Warriors, Intellectuals, and Artists,"examines contested figures: Empress Messalina, a transgressive figure of Eros and Thanatos, fascinated fin-de-siècle novelists writing on nymphomania; Inès de Castro, the lover and posthumously-recognized wife of Portugal's Peter I, appears in works by Mme de Genlis and Montherlant, among others; Joan of Arc is examined in a number of articles as messianic figure, the people's heroine, patriot and Republican, resistance heroine, and today's defender of the European Union and mouth-piece of its detractors; the complex reception of Marguerite de Navarre, Marguerite de Valois, and Elizabeth I figures in several excellent studies; and the representations of George Sand, women artists of the Romantic period (Mme de Staël, Marie Dorval, Maria Malibran, and Pauline Viardot), and Charlotte de Belgique, the short-lived empress of Mexico (1864–66), complete the collection. This book is especially valuable as an introduction for undergraduate students interested in the reception of French women writers and female historical figures.