Renée-Claude Breitenstein

Renée-Claude Breitenstein
Résidents Labex RFIEA+
Résidents Programme EURIAS

dates de séjour

15/09/2015 - 13/07/2016

discipline

Littérature

Fonction d’origine

Professeure assistante

Institution d’origine

Université Brook (Canada)

Fonction actuelle

Professeure associée

Institution actuelle

Université Brook (Canada)

pays d'origine

Canada

projet de recherche

Conflict in the Age of Print: Publics and Publicatins in Collections in Praise of Women in the French Renaissance

Moving from manuscript to print created new audiences, beyond patronage. Books became increasingly available to a greater number of readers from a wider social background, beyond the restricted circles of aristocracy and learned readers. Amongst these new readers are women, who gained visibility and became an important component in the public arena shaped in the Renaissance. But far from forming a unified readership, these audiences are diverse, sometimes superposed, sometimes juxtaposed, always plural, often contradictory. The advent of printing seen as a conflicted process is particularly noticeable in texts dedicated to, about, or written by women. From the first printed translation into French of Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris (1493) to the Égalité des hommes et des femmes (1622) by Marie de Gournay, collections in praise of women celebrate exceptional feminine figures for their virtues, or defend womankind through praise. Produced in the age of print, they are invaluable signs of the growing presence of women in the public sphere. The goal of the proposed research is to investigate the influence of print culture on the construction of the public in collections in praise of women.

At the intersection of rhetoric, history and moral philosophy, collections in praise of women are precious testimonies: in their times, they offered a form of publicity to women; to modern readers, they provide complex representations of early modern female figures engaged in activities reaching beyond the domestic sphere. My program entertains a double goal: (i) to make this corpus better known as a literary genre by editing twelve texts, some unavailable in modern editions; and (ii) to explore this corpus through an interdisciplinary approach using book history, sociology, and women studies, under the specific angle of publics and publications, in a study.

biographie

Renée-Claude Breitenstein is Associate Professor of French and teaches Medieval and 16th century literature in the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures. She holds a Ph.D in early modern French Literature from McGill University, Montréal. Her research interests include rhetoric, argumentation theory, book history, and reception and gender studies. She currently focuses on collections in praise of women as part of a SSHRC funded project on the influence of print culture on texts dedicated to, about, or written by women in the French Renaissance. Her mains research interests include French literature of the Renaissance; rhetoric (praise and blame in particular) and argumentation; construction of publics; book history, print culture, iconography; & representation of women.