Françoise de Graffigny (1695–1758), femme de lettres des Lumières éd. par Charlotte Simonin

Abstract

Reviewed by: Françoise de Graffigny (1695–1758), femme de lettres des Lumières éd. par Charlotte Simonin Anoosheh Ghaderi Simonin, Charlotte, éd. Françoise de Graffigny (1695–1758), femme de lettres des Lumières. Garnier, 2020. ISBN 978-2-406-09736-5. Pp. 460. This book's introduction highlights two events that shed light on Graffigny's work. First, in 1960, after having been forgotten since the success of her play Cénie (1750) and the reedition of her novel Lettres d'une Péruvienne (1754), Graffigny came back to public attention as a result of new editions and translations. This event made her works accessible to a larger audience and turned her into a canonical author in literature programs in countries such as the United States. Secondly, 2500 of Graffigny's letters, exchanged with her friend François-Antoine Devaux between 1738 and 1758, were found in an auction of Sir Thomas Phillips's library in 1965. The publication of Graffigny's Correspondance jumpstarted several research projects and a series of conferences by English Showalter from 1999 to 2004. This collection gathers twenty articles, which exhibit the richness of Graffigny's work, each from a different aspect. The editor classified the essays in four major sections. The essays in the first section locate Graffigny in her social milieu and the impact of the surrounding environment on her literary career. "Françoise de Graffigny et ses relations avec les pays germaniques" studies the importance of Graffigny's relationships in Vienna for the recognition and distribution of her works, even before they were published. The research on Graffigny's letters, plays, and fairy tales is the subject of the second section, which shows that Graffigny's Correspondance offers a unique historical document for the researchers interested in studying French society under the Ancien Régime. For instance, Simonin's article tracks the representation of dogs and canine references, which demonstrates aspects of everyday life of the time. Given that the Correspondance is an intimate exchange, Aurore Montesi argues that it makes the collection more than just a historical document. It is in fact a document devoid of "pressions extérieures," such as censorship. Moreover, the Correspondance provides information about literary figures of the time, for example Marivaux. The third section tackles the feminist- and gender-related themes in Graffigny's works and letters. Some of the articles challenge Graffigny's relation to other women in her real life, her ideas about gender-related issues, and the contradictions that one can find in some of her writings. The fourth section focuses on translations of Lettres d'une Péruvienne in Germany and Spain, and of Cénie in Italy and the Netherlands, which will be of interest to scholars working in translation studies. [End Page 239] Anoosheh Ghaderi Louisiana State University Copyright © 2021 American Association of Teachers of French