Identité de genre et malaise dans l'oeuvre romanesque de Marilyn French
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Bordeaux 3Disciplines:
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Abstract EN:
Marilyn french's work, varied and coherent, includes novels, literary criticism and sociological essays. Novelist and feminist theorist, marilynfrench (1929- ) belongs to the generation of american women writers who discovered their vocation and their voice in the context of the women's liberation movement. Her contribution to contemporary women's writing is her description of our current malaise, a malaise which is multiform and whose source is the constrictive gener identity which deforms men and women and whose signs appear in our socio-cultural environment. Pessimism and determinism haunt her novels since the suffering continues despite the influence of the feminist movement. This fatalism contradicts the utopian project sketched out in an important essay and constitutes a fundamental problem for our study. The contradiction, opposing two literary genres, is somewhat resolved by the author's recognition of the complexity of human experience. Her work attests to the difficulty in elaborating new gender identities capable of healing the wound.
Abstract FR:
L'oeuvre de marilyn french (1929- ), variee et coherente, comprend des romans, des ouvrages de critique litteraire et des essais d'ordre sociologique. Romanciere et theoricienne feministe, marilyn french appartient a cette generation de femmes ecrivains americaines qui ont trouve leur voie voix dans le contexte du mouvement pour la liberation de la femme. Sa contribution au roman feminin contemporain consiste en la mise en scene du malaise actuel, malaise multiforme issu d'une identite de genre contraignante qui deforme hommes et femmes et dont les signes apparaissent dans l'environnement socioculturel. Le pessimisme et le determinisme planent sur son oeuvre romanesque, car la souffrance persiste malgre le passage du mouvement feministe. Ce fatalisme va a l'encontre duprojet utopique esquissee dans un essai sociologique et forme la base de notre problematique. Cette contradiction, opposant genres romanesque et sociologique, s'attenue face a la complexite de l'experience humaine, complexite que french reconnait. Son oeuvre temoigne de la difficulte qu'il y a a elaborer de nouvelles identites feminines et masculines capables d'enrayer ce mal.