Politics and Narratives of Birth: Gynocolonization from Rousseau to Zola

Abstract

Acknowledgements A note on translations Introduction: conception of this book Part I. Stendhal: Delivering a Plot: 1. Death and transfiguration in the Vie de Henry Brulard 2. Palimpsest and pregnancy: reading across Stendhalian autobiography 3. Stendhalian fictions: plotting the unspeakable Part II. Production, Reproductions and Narrative Form: Adolphe: 4. Introduction 5. The economy of production: the paternal and narrative form 6. Reproduction: (de)composing mother 7. Rebirth and the performance of matricide Part III. Gynocolonization: Rousseau, Michelet, Zolar and the Nineteenth-Century French Novel Section 1: 8. Introduction: toward a bodied politics 9. For unto us a son is born: Emile 10. Birthing the body politic: Du contrat social 11. The politic in the body Rousseau: Emile revisited and 'La Reigne Fantasque' Section 2: 12. Introduction: birth, motherhood and the disease of democracy 13. The flesh made word: Enfants du siecle and pathologies of reproduction in the nineteenth-century French novel 14. Liberty, equality, maternity: Michelet as body snatcher 15. Into Africa: Zola and gynocolonization Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index.