Louise Labé, Marguerite de Navarre et Madame de Lafayette : trois voix féminines et espaces féminins retrouves

Author

Mahdia Ben Salem

Date of Award

5-1995

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Modern Foreign Languages

Major Professor

Edmund Champion

Abstract

This research addressed questions of gender and genres, space lost and found, silence and treatment of women focusing on three French female authors: Louise Labé, Marguerite de Navarre, and Madame de Lafayette. Their respective work: Les Oeuvres, L'Heptaméron, La Princesse de Clèves was surveyed as well as pertinent literay criticism. All authors are viewed as prefeminist because of the textual techniques of language subversion they used to offer the reader a new way to look at and to consider women. Louise Labé made clear that women have talents, a right to love and enjoy sexual freedom. Marguerite de Navarre discussed treatments of women in a society which does not ban rape and irrespect. Madame de Lafayette successfully offered her heroin freedom of space and speech, the pursuit of her happiness in a countryside retreat. Each work contains some autobiographical information such as the love life of Labé, the rape of the Queen of Navarre (Novella IV) and the religious life of Madame de Lafayette. These three women offered a new insight of women's evolving situation.