Middlebrow matters : women's reading and the literary canon in France since the Belle Époque / Diana Holmes.

Author/creator Holmes, Diana, 1949- author.
Format Book
PublicationLiverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2018.
Copyright Date©2018
Description244 pages ; 24 cm.
Subjects
French fiction--20th century. --History and criticism.
French fiction--Women authors. --History and criticism.
Women and literature--France. --History. --20th century.
Women--France. --Social conditions. --20th century.
Feminism in literature.
Social classes in literature.

SeriesContemporary French and francophone cultures ; 57
Contemporary French and francophone cultures ; 57. ^A772988
Contents Reclaiming the middlebrow -- The birth of French middlebrow -- Colette: The middlebrow modernist -- Interwar France: The case of the missing middlebrow -- The 'little world' of Françoise Sagan -- Literary prizes, women and the middlebrow -- Realism, romance and self-reflexivity: Twenty-first-century middlebrow -- Conclusion: Marie NDiaye's femme puissante -- a double reading.
Abstract "This is the first book to study the middlebrow novel in France. Middlebrow is a derogatory word that connotes blandness, mediocrity and a failed aspiration to 'high' culture. However, when appropriated as a positive term to denote that wide swathe of literature between the challenging experimentalism of the high and the formulaic tendency of the popular, it enables a rethinking of the literary canon from the point of view of what most readers actually read, a criterion curiously absent from dominant definitions of literary value. Since women have long formed a majority of the reading public, this perspective immediately feminises what has always been a very male canon. Opening with a theorisation of the concept of middlebrow that mounts a defence of some literary qualities disdained by modernism, the book then focuses on a series of case studies of periods (the Belle Époque, inter-war, early twenty-first century), authors (including Colette, Irène Nemirovsky, Françoise Sagan, Anna Gavalda) and the middlebrow nature of literary prizes. It concludes with a double reading of a single text, from the perspective of an academic critic, and from that of a middlebrow reader."--Page 4 of cover.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references (pages 223-237) and index.
Terms of useCurrent Copyright Fee: GBP17.50 0.
Genre/formCriticism, interpretation, etc.
Genre/formHistory.
ISBN1786941562
ISBN9781786941565

Availability

Library Location Call Number Status Item Actions
Joyner General Stacks PQ673 .H645 2018 ✔ Available Place Hold