La tradition des romans de femmes

Catherine Mariette-Clot, Damien Zanone

The names of Mrs. Charriere, Cottin, de Duras, Gay, de Genlis, Graffigny, Guizot Krudener, Montolieu, Riccoboni, de Souza, Tencin in their time were famous novelists, but are little known to later generations. From the mid-nineteenth century, they have not been selected as scholars' quintessential pieces of the history of literature and the history of the woman's novel. As for the notoriety that has always surrounded the names of Madame de Staël and George Sand, it is often occupied aspects of their biography, constructed and darlings like stereotypes that their work of novelists. The fact is, however, in the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, novels written and published by women is common enough to be recognized as a tradition of "women's novels". The unity of the collective name suggests the presence in these texts a specific handling of the romantic language,...