Anne E. Duggan, Salonnières, Furies, and Fairies: The Politics of Gender and Cultural Change in Absolutist France, 2nd edition

About This Book:

The original edition of Salonnières, Furies, and Fairies, published in 2005, was a pathbreaking work of early modern literary history, exploring women’s role in the rise of the fairy tale and their use of this new genre to carve out roles as major contributors to the literature of their time. This new edition, with a new introduction and a forward by acclaimed scholar Allison Stedman, emphasizes the scholarly legacy of Anne Duggan’s original work, and its continuing field-changing implications. The book studies the works of two of the most prolific seventeenth-century women writers, Madeleine de Scudéry and Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy. Analyzing their use of the novel, the chronicle, and the fairy tale, Duggan examines how Scudéry and d'Aulnoy responded to and participated in the changes of their society, but from different generational and ideological positions. This study also takes into account the history of the salon, an unofficial institution that served as a locus for elite women's participation in the cultural and literary production of their society. In order to highlight the debates that emerged with the increased participation of aristocratic women within the public sphere, the book also explores the responses of two academicians, Nicolas Boileau and Charles Perrault.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments                                                                                                                 
Foreword by Allison Stedman                                                                                                  
Introduction to the Second Edition                                                                                       
Preface                                                                                                                    
Chapter 1: Politics, Gender, and Cultural Change                                                                                   
Chapter 2: Love Orders Chaos:  Madeleine de Scudéry’s Clélie, Histoire Romaine                              
Chapter 3: Adults at Play: Les Chronqiues des Samedis de Mademoiselle de Scudéry                          
Chapter 4: Boileau and Perrault: The Public Sphere and Female Folly                                                  
Chapter 5: The Tyranny of Patriarchs in L’Histoire d’Hypolite, Comte de Duglas                                
Chapter 6: Fairy Tales and Mondanité                                                                                                    
Afterword                                                                                                                               
Works Cited                                                                                                                           
Index