Imagining Women's Conventual Spaces in France, 1600–1800
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A01=Barbara R. Woshinsky
Author_Barbara R. Woshinsky
Category=JBSF1
Category=QRAX
Category=QRM
Category=QRVS5
Chez Elle
Claire De Duras
communities
convent life literary analysis
Convent Parlor
Counter-Reformation literature
Dans Ce
De Brou
De Chartres
De Climal
De Montpensier
duchesse
Duchesse De Langeais
early modern gender studies
enclosure
English Trans
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
female enclosure narratives
French religious history
Je Ne
Jean Jacques Lequeu
jean-pierre
La Princesse De
La Religieuse
La Vie De
Lady Happy
langeais
Lettres Portugaises
Mademoiselle De Montpensier
Marivaux's La Vie De
Marivaux’s La Vie De
mme
Mme De
Par Ma
patriarchal power structures
Portuguese Nun
Princesse De
religieuse
religious
strict
women in sacred architecture
Women's Convents
womens
Women’s Convents
Young Man
Product details
- ISBN 9780754667544
- Weight: 839g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 28 Oct 2010
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Blending history and architecture with literary analysis, this ground-breaking study explores the convent's place in the early modern imagination. The author brackets her account between two pivotal events: the Council of Trent imposing strict enclosure on cloistered nuns, and the French Revolution expelling them from their cloisters two centuries later. In the intervening time, women within convent walls were both captives and refugees from an outside world dominated by patriarchal power and discourses. Yet despite locks and bars, the cloister remained "porous" to privileged visitors. Others could catch a glimpse of veiled nuns through the elaborate grills separating cloistered space from the church, provoking imaginative accounts of convent life. Not surprisingly, the figure of the confined religious woman represents an intensified object of desire in male-authored narrative. The convent also spurred "feminutopian" discourses composed by women: convents become safe houses for those fleeing bad marriages or trying to construct an ideal, pastoral life, as a counter model to the male-dominated court or household. Recent criticism has identified certain privileged spaces that early modern women made their own: the ruelle, the salon, the hearth of fairy tale-telling. Woshinsky's book definitively adds the convent to this list.
Barbara Woshinsky, Professor Emerita at the University of Miami, has authored La Princesse de Clèves: the Tension of Elegance, The Linguistic Imperative in French Classical Literature and numerous articles.
