The Branding of Female Authorship in Enlightenment Europe: A Paratextual Study of Les Journées amusantes (1722–31) by Madeleine-Angélique Poisson de Gomez

Abstract

Abstract As revisionist studies have recently shown in the wake of Gérard Genette’s Seuils (1987), editorial paratexts in translated works, such as prefaces and illustrations, are valuable documents for capturing the ideological parameters which early modern publishers and translators had to skilfully exploit to promote their work. A case in point is the little known yet important eighteenth-century collection of framed-novelle Les Journées amusantes (1722–31) by Madeleine-Angélique Poisson de Gomez (1684–1776). Through the lens of intertextuality and intericonicity, this article offers a two-part analysis of the paratextual material (verbal and visual) contained in the foreign editions of this work. It evaluates the strategies which ‘image-makers’ used to ensure the legitimacy of a text which was originally written by a woman. In particular, it highlights transnational instances of dialogic interplay and cultural transfer, allowing for a better understanding of the female writer’s status across Europe and revealing the cultural and pedagogical parts which translators, publishers and engravers played in the formation of eighteenth-century European readerships.