In this master's paper, the author studies the written construction of the ethos of the female characters in the essay from Madeleine and Georges de Scudery that was published in 1642 in Paris, Les Femmes illustres ou les harangues heroiques. She demonstrates how the authors refused the usual accepted practices in literature at that time to claim a right for women to develop their intellect in the way men could develop theirs. Therefore, she compares the contents of the essay with two important visions of women in literature: one of a strong women, as exposed in the literature linked to the "Querelle des femmes", and one of a weeping mistress screaming out all of her pain and sorrow, inspired from the Heroides d'Ovide. She shows how the text of the Scudery is different from the ones related to the "Querelle des femmes". She studies the formal characteristics of the harangue and she compares a rhetoric analysis of the scuderian texts with a quick study of the latin epistles. By doing so, the author wants to make the originality emerge out of the female characters of the Femmes illustres. She wants to emphasize the fact that the authors of that essay allowed women to become the subjects rather than the objects of the speeches. They gave them a chance to express their courage, their pride and their ambitions rather than confining them exclusively to family, love and religion matters, breaking out the traditional scope of the female speech.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.33886 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Dionne, Karina. |
| Contributors | Desrosiers-Bonin, Diane (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Département de langue et littérature françaises.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001875432, proquestno: MQ79000, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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