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

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

Hardback
August 2021 • ISBN 978-1-64453-215-7 • $150.00

Paperback
August 2021 • ISBN 978-1-64453-216-4 • $41.95

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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.

About the Author

Anne E. Duggan is Professor of French in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Wayne State University. Working between the French early modern tale tradition and twentieth- and twenty-first century French fairy-tale film, her most recent books include Queer Enchantments: Gender, Sexuality, and Class in the Fairy-Tale Cinema of Jacques Demy (2013; translated as Enchantements désenchantés: les contes queer de Jacques Demy, 2015), and Folktales and Fairy Tales: Traditions and Texts from around the World (4 vols. co-edited with Donald Haase, with Helen Callow; 2016). Professor Duggan is co-editor of Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies.