Reviewed by: Correspondance de la Grande Guerre à Folco de Baroncelli. Tome I (1914-1915):Sauver le grand homme, réhabiliter l'image de la petite patrie by Jeanne de Flandreysy Callan Roten Flandreysy, Jeanne de. Correspondance de la Grande Guerre à Folco de Baroncelli. Tome I (1914-1915):Sauver le grand homme, réhabiliter l'image de la petite patrie. Ed. Colette H. Winn and Colette Trout. Classiques Garnier, 2018. Pp. 870. ISBN 978-2-406-07217-1. 105€ (cloth). 67€ (paper). World War I ushered in a period of great despair, trauma, and imbalance across Europe. Of all of the hardships faced during the war and the post-war period, a large focus has been placed on the sacrifices and contributions made by men. Modern feminist scholarship has aimed to bring equal attention to the multitude of sacrifices and contributions made by women during the Great War. Jeanne de Flandreysy, though she is still little-known by the French public, is an excellent example of a woman who served her country in the war in the best way that she could—through writing. Like many other women during the war, Jeanne de Flandreysy wrote a substantial number of letters. However, many of the letters written by women during this time are almost impossible to find. Jeanne de [End Page 153] Flandreysy's 998 letters to Folco de Baroncelli during the Great War period are currently being conserved in Avignon at the Palais du Roure, but until now have never been included in a critical edition or published collection. Colette H. Winn and Colette Trout's critical edition embarks on the daunting task of providing a detailed chronicle of Jeanne de Flandreysy's epistolary corpus enriched with a thorough introduction, annotations, and appendix that solidifies the importance of her letters. In this first volume, the editors chose to focus on the letters from the years 1914-1915. They argue that these letters shed light on the essential role that Jeanne played in Folco de Baroncelli's future as a poet and also provide a personal account of the lived experience for both French men and women during the war. Winn and Trout also argue that Flandreysy's friendship with Folco highlights the important (and often ignored) role that women played during the war. Women were the "war's audience"—they encouraged soldiers, listened to them, and mourned with them. Through her letters to Folco while he was stationed in Toul, Jeanne was able to successfully fulfill this role. In her letters, Jeanne feeds Folco's desire for knowledge, detailing the effects of war on daily life, her fears, and the ever-growing number of casualties. The introduction and the abundance of notes in this critical edition provide an extensive overview of Flandreysy's life and her relationship with Folco, while solidifying her importance as a woman of letters. Winn and Trout's introduction carefully examines the multiple functions of epistolary writing. Through a deep analysis of the letters, the editors are successfully able to establish how Flandreysy's correspondence exemplifies each of these functions. Calling upon other scholars, the editors also effectively highlight the importance of the female experience, particularly through writing, during the Great War. Although the volume does not contain Folco's correspondence to Jeanne, his voice is always present in her letters, calling attention to the powerful style of Flandreysy's writing. This remarkable critical edition brings an outstanding and lesser known figure out of the shadows while allowing us to understand the greater importance of epistolary writing and of the female war experience. Callan Roten University of Maryland, College Park Copyright © 2020 Women in French Studies
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