Femme des lumières, Françoise de Graffigny (1695-1758) a une culture éclectique et occupe une place singulière dans la société de son temps. Autodidacte, lectrice infatigable, salonnière, auteure entre autres des "Lettres d'une Péruvienne", de "Cénie" et de plusieurs petites pièces, elle est admirée par ses contemporains. Membre de la République des Lettres, elle accueille dans son salon une élite culturelle.Dans une première partie, nous analysons et commentons ses références culturelles et ses lectures privilégiées qui ont pu lui servir de source de formation et/ou d'inspiration. Nous découvrons dans les milliers de pages de la correspondance un manuscrit clandestin, qui semble bien annoncer le "Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville" de Diderot. Dans une deuxième partie, nous déchiffrons et annotons les lettres manuscrites inédites de son correspondant François-Antoine Devaux, complétant ainsi l'analyse de la correspondance de Mme de Graffigny en saisissant sur le vif le débat des deux correspondants sur leurs lectures et sur la vie sociale de leur temps. Enfin, dans une troisième partie, nous étudions les idées maitresses de Françoise de Graffigny, féministe, éducatrice, faisant le procès de la jalousie intellectuelle par le biais du portrait sarcastique de Voltaire. Sa correspondance est néanmoins imprégnée par une part d'ombre, par une angoisse existentielle teintée d'ennui, qu'elle parvient à convertir en une affirmation ardente de la joie de vivre qui anticipe sur les idéaux de Rousseau, et cela par delà le désenchantement qui l'oppresse et les ridicules du monde qui l'entoure, c'est le dernier mot de la sagesse de Françoise de Graffigny. / A woman of the Enlightenments, Françoise de Graffigny (1695-1758) had an eclectic culture and occupied a singular situation in the society of her time. Self-taught, indefatigable reader, "salonnière", author among other works of the "Lettres d'une Péruvienne", "Cénie" and severa small plays. She was admirated by her contemporaries. Member of the Republic of Letters, she welcomed the cultural elite in her salon. In the first part, we analyse and comment upon her cultural references and her favourite authors which could serve as a source of education and/or inspiration. We discover in the thousands of pages of the correspondence a clandestine manuscript wich seems announce the Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville" of Diderot. In the second part, we deciphe the unpublished manuscript letters from her correspondent François-Antoine Devaux, thus completing the analysis of Mme de Graffigny's correspondence by commenting on the frame discussions between the two correspondents on their reading and on the social life of their time.Finally, in the third part, we study Françoise de Graffigny's main ideas, her feminist convictions and pedagogical methids, pleading against intellectual jealousy through the sarcastics portrait of Voltaire. Her correspondence ar nevertheless marked by a shadow, by an existential anxiety tinged with boredom that she succeeds in converting into a burning assertion of the joy of life which anticipates Rousseau's ideals and dominates the opressing disenchantment and ridiculousness of the world around her, this joy is the last word of the wisdom of Françoise de Graffigny.

Letter – human oldest way of communication in written form, known from 18th century BC in Egypt. Epistolary prose – the collection of letters and correspondence, which appeared in early 18th century (in the age of Enlightenment) is still alive till our days. The first signs of Lithuanian epistolary appeared in literature in interwar period. Much more epistolary works appeared from the end of 20th century up to the beginning of the 21st century (modernism and postmodernism.) In this writing for a Master degree three modern Lithuanian epistolary examples are being studieg: the novel Letters from Viešvilė (2001) by Leonardas Gutauskas, narrative The best metaphysical friend by Herkus Kunčius and novel And Tomorrow We’ll Have to Go On (2002) by Ugnė Barauskaitė. These examples have common features and they are: the letter, the situation between the addressee and the author, dialogue (monologue), the outlook of feelings, the subjectivity and the need of a game. The aim of the work – the research of the transformation of modern epistolary and the influence of modern poetry on epistolary prose. These issues are almost unknown in Lithuanian literary criticism. Obviously, the questions are far too abstract, for that reason I have formulated concrete tasks of a research: The influence of some poetical elements of modern prose ( for example the subjectivity of narration, the criticism and search of values, inner monologue and the technique of stream-of-consciousness) on... [to full text]

This dissertation seeks to show that the figure of the female letter-writer in English Renaissance literature, rather than reflecting the culture’s desire to contain, undermine, or destroy the notion of women’s textual production, in fact represents the culture’s desire to imagine and see women as writers. The image of the female letter-writer was sufficiently pervasive both to normalize the idea that real women might properly engage in textual production, and to function as a literary trope which was used to investigate issues beyond gender ideology. “Author of Prodigies” explores representations of women’s epistolary creation in a broad selection of fictional texts, primarily drama. Based on these representations, I argue that the figure of the female letter-writer functioned as a means through which the fragile and epistemologically fraught relationship between the subject and the writing in which she engages was explored. In Chapter One, I focus primarily on the history of early feminist criticism, issues of how letters are related to non-epistolary texts, Renaissance notions of subjectivity and its relationship to gender, and how subjectivity was understood to adhere in epistolary writing. In Chapter Two, I examine texts in which female characters pen letters in their own blood. Blood letters figure the fragility, marginality, and vulnerability associated with self revelation in a context in which female subjectivity was not comfortably acknowledged. Chapter Three features texts that contemplate the fantasy of female characters wooing their beaux by merging epistolary production and metadramatic performances of femininity. These characters use gendered social constraints to their advantage, revealing themselves to be sufficiently skillful to manipulate social and material signs of their marginalized position in order to achieve their personal desires. Chapter Four focuses on male fetishization of women’s intellectual labour through letter-writing, and the ways in which women writers anticipate and manipulate this response. These depictions of women’s mental work are infused with mystery, which is integral to the pleasure of imagining women engaged in letter-writing. However, as the terms of the fetish are being established in these texts they are also in the process of being normalized. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2008-12-15 21:08:25.539

My dissertation expands on recent work in literary studies that has emphasized the significance of autobiographical narratives of disability for both identity construction and the establishment of narrative authority. It adds to this recent scholarship with the critical understanding that letters are often a significant part of the stories that persons with disabilities tell about themselves. I concentrate on the letters of three Victorian writers—Harriet Martineau, John Kitto, and Helen Keller—whose deafness or hearing impairment have been subjects of much scholarship, but whose familiar letters have not been completely recognized as vital resources for insight into their disability narratives. I examine how each author uses the implied or imagined community inherent in the exchange of familiar letters in specific yet different ways to write their disability narrative and I explore the ways that conceptions of disabled embodiment are constructed, deconstructed, and re-written. I explore ways in which Harriet Martineau uses letters to blur the lines between the private and the public and to publish an illness/disability narrative that allowed her to maintain both personal and public authority over her illness and disability; I examine Helen Keller’s early letters and the ways in which writing about her body enabled her, through a significant epistolary community, to explore her own existence and to develop a concern with philanthropic work; and I consider John Kitto’s familiar letters in comparison with his work The Lost Senses and I explore his self-construction in that work as a solitary “overcomer” and the manner in which these letters contradict this construction to provide a fuller picture of his life leading up to the book’s publication. I also discuss several of Kitto’s poems as critical additions to his disability narrative. Building on the work of my previous chapters, I conclude this dissertation with an examination of the familiar letters and poetry of Amy Levy. My inclusion of Levy’s letters and poetry builds on and complicates my work in the preceding chapters and makes a case for the recognition that disability narratives are multifaceted and cannot always be restricted to a single concern.

Revision of Thesis--Columbia University. / Bibliography: p. [163]-167.

Revision of Thesis--Columbia University. / Bibliography: p. [163]-167.

Thesis (MA)--University of Melbourne, School of Historical Studies, 2010. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-91)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1982. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 445-458).

Le problème de la communication, et pas seulement du danger des liaisons, est au cœur du roman épistolaire de manière générale et de Clarissa de Samuel Richardson en particulier. Sans cesse menacée d'interruption, la communication représentée dans la diégèse du deuxième roman de Richardson influe également sur le sens et relève à ce titre de ce que Janet Altman a appelé l'épistolarité. Cette étude se concentre sur le code de la communication représentée dans l'œuvre et saisit la lettre dans l’économie de l’information toute particulière dont elle participe, à la croisée d'une communication interne entre ses personnages et des exigences d'une communication externe qui voit le matériau épistolaire affluer vers le Lecteur. Elle s'efforce de souligner à quel point le scénario romanesque est informé par la nature des communications au travers desquelles il s’exprime ainsi qu'à travers les communications auxquelles il donne lieu (Clarissa étant l'objet d'âpres négociations entre son auteur et ses lecteurs), tout comme il informe à son tour la nature de ces communications. L'examen de la communication dans et autour du roman de Richardson met en évidence l'existence d'une poétique qui est aussi une économie. L'histoire de Clarissa n'est pas tant l'histoire de ses lettres que celle de ses communications. / The problem of communication, and not only that of the danger of the liaisons, is at the heart of the epistolary novel in general and of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa in particular. Constantly threatened with interruption, the communication represented in the diegesis of Richardson's second novel also informs meaning and thus belongs to what Janet Altman called epistolarity. This study concentrates on the code of communication represented in the work and endeavors to grasp the letter in its particular economy of communication, at the crossroads of internal communication between its characters and the demands of an external communication that requires that the epistolary material be oriented towards the reader. This study strives to underline to what extent the novelistic scenario is informed by the nature of the communications through which it expresses itself as well as by the communications it produces among its readers in the shape of letters to the author. The examination of communication in and around Richardson's novel bears witness to the existence of a poetics that is also an economy. The history of Clarissa is not so much that of its letters as that of its communications.

Este trabalho reúne esforços para analisar aspectos da teoria literária de Jean-Jacques Rousseau a partir do romance La Nouvelle Héloïse, considerando suas inovações estéticas em face do período de então (século XVIII) e a relevância explicativa da obra no seio do pensamento do autor. Aos propósitos do trabalho, é fundamental entender a escolha do gênero epistolar a fim de facilitar o estreitamento da narrativa com a experiência do leitor, o que se combina com a crítica da representação e com o ideal rousseauniano da transparência, perfazendo o formato do romance que Rousseau, após severas críticas à literatura, transige em considerar necessário por oferecer um exemplo de virtude no amor a uma sociedade degenerada pela corrupção dos costumes. / This work combines forces to analyze aspects of Jean-Jacques Rousseaus Literary Theory at the novel La Nouvelle Héloïse in light of its aesthetic innovations towards that period (the 18th century) and the explicative relevance of the work to the core of the author\'s thoughts. With respect to the purpose of the work, it is important to understand the choice of the epistolary form in order to facilitate the alignment of the narrative with the experience of the reader, which is consonant with the critique of representation and with the Rousseaunian ideal of transparency, constituting the format of the novel that Rousseau, after severe criticisms of literature, came to consider necessary to offer an example of virtue through love to a society degenerated by the corruption of customs.