Dena Goodman

A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment

The Republic of Letters

Thomas E. Kaiser

Marie-Antoinette is one of the most fascinating and controversial figures in all of French history. This volume explores the many struggles by various individuals and groups to put right Marie's identity, and it simultaneously links these struggles to larger destabilizations in social, political and gender systems in France. Looking at how Marie was represented in politics, art, literature and journalism, the contributors to this volume reveal how crucial political and cultural contexts were enacted "on the body of the queen" and on the complex identity of Marie. Taken together, these essays suggest that it is precisely because she came to represent the contradictions in the social, political and gender systems of her era, that Marie remains such an important historical figure.

Writings on the Body of a Queen

Marie-Antoinette

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Marie Antoinette

In 18th century France, letter writing became extremely fashionable, particularly amongst women. In this work, Dena Goodman opens up the world of these women though the letters which they wrote. Concentrating on the letters of four women from different social backgrounds, she shows how they came to womanhood through their writing.

Becoming a Woman in the Age of Letters

Elizabeth C. Goldsmith

Exploring the ways in which French women went public through publication, this book shows how they contributed to the formation of the public sphere in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Going Public also takes the critical literature on the woman writer to a new level by examining the implications of print publicity. The contributors investigate the intersection of gender and publicity in a wide range of printed texts, from memoirs and legal briefs to novels, poems, and fairy tales. In doing so they reveal much about why individual women drawn from the whole spectrum of society embraced the medium of print and about the impact this form of publicity had on their lives.

Dena Goodman

Books

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