Des revues et des femmes: la place des femmes dans les revues littéraires de la Belle Époque jusqu’à la fin des années 1950 by Amélie Auzoux, Camille Koskas et Elisabeth Russo

Abstract

Reviewed by: Des revues et des femmes: la place des femmes dans les revues littéraires de la Belle Époque jusqu’à la fin des années 1950 by Amélie Auzoux, Camille Koskas et Elisabeth Russo Hope Christiansen Auzoux, Amélie, Camille Koskas, et Elisabeth Russo, éd. Des revues et des femmes: la place des femmes dans les revues littéraires de la Belle Époque jusqu’à la fin des années 1950. Champion, 2022. ISBN 978-2-7453-5676-5. Pp. 305. This fine collection analyzes the presence (and absence) of women in a wide range of literary journals published during the first half of the twentieth century. An overview by Jean-Yves Mollier lays the foundation for a chronological treatment of the subject, with sections on the Belle Époque, the period of La Nouvelle Revue française (“citadelle masculine s’il en est” [11]), l’entre-deuxguerres, and the post-World War II era. The material devoted to the Belle Époque is particularly cohesive, thanks to the solid work of Diana Holmes, Martine Reid, and Rachel Mesch on Femina and La vie heureuse, topped off by Wendy Prin-Conti’s intriguing piece on the representation of women poets in Les annales politiques et littéraires. If the journal was at first uniformly condescending toward women’s poetry (juxtaposing lines from women’s and men’s poems in order to highlight the former’s technical inferiority, for instance), it would eventually not only publish poetry by women but publicize and pre-publish excerpts of their forthcoming collections. In the section devoted to the NRF, François Bompaire offers insights on Anna de Noailles, Jean-Kely Paulhan on Élisabeth Porquerol, and Hélène Baty-Delalande on how women fared under Jean Paulhan. Of particular note is Camille Koskas’s discussion of Dominique Aury who, in addition to being the only female member of Gallimard’s comité de lecture for twenty-five years, was instrumental in drawing attention to writers such as Colette, Violette Leduc, and Simone de Beauvoir. The book’s third section looks at women’s involvement in journals specifically through the prisms of politics and cosmopolitanism. Under scrutiny are figures such as Dick May (Mélanie Fabre), Ludmila Savitzky (Amélie Auzoux), Aline Mayrisch (Paola Codazzi), Georgette Camille (Marie Cléren) as well as less well-known publications (La Revue du monde noir [Andy Stafford] and Mesures [Clarisse Barthelémy]). Auzoux paints a vivid picture of a France that felt threatened after World War I by the importation of foreign literature, making Savitsky’s opposition to the francisation of other languages in her translations and her desire to “laisser l’étranger dans toute son étrangeté” (157) all the harder to accept. The four essays in the final section explore the increased visibility of women in literary journals after the second World War. Éric Dussert discusses Marguerite Grepon, champion of the journal intime, while Élisabeth Russo investigates the first fifteen years of Les Temps [End Page 253] modernes, warning readers against simply assuming that Simone de Beauvoir “par une quelconque solidarité ou soif de justice éditoriale, favorise les femmes plus que leurs homologues masculins” (236), when in fact she showed little interest in the idea of une littérature de femme or in promoting women writers. Laurent Gayard showcases Nathalie Henneberg, who gradually gained autonomy as a science fiction writer after participating in l’écriture à quatre mains with her husband, paving the way for other women to make a name for themselves in the genre. Michel Murat’s analysis of Tel Quel (with particular emphasis on Julia Kristeva) brings this important contribution to scholarship on women’s writing and feminism to a close. [End Page 254] Hope Christiansen University of Arkansas Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French