Mothers of Invention: Feminist Authors and Experimental Fiction in France and QuebecSantoro elucidates notoriously difficult works by the four "mothers of invention" studied - Cixous and Hyvrard from France, and Gagnon and Brossard from Quebec - showing how the rethinking of images associated with femininity and motherhood, a disruptive approach to language, and a subversive relation to novelistic conventions characterize these writers' search for a writing that will best express women's desires and dreams. Mothers of Invention situates such ideologically motivated textual practices within the avant-garde tradition, even as it suggests how women's experimental writings collectively transform our understanding of that tradition. Santoro makes clear the shared ethical and aesthetic commitments that nourished a transatlantic community whose contribution to mainstream literature and cultural productions, including postmodernism, is still being felt today. |
Contents
| 3 | |
Tracing the Contexts of Feminist Writing in the 1970s in France and Quebec | 10 |
Hélène Cixouss La | 37 |
Madeleine Gagnons Lueur | 98 |
Nicole Brossards LAmèr | 153 |
Jeanne Hyvrards Early Novels | 208 |
Conclusion | 268 |
Notes | 283 |
| 319 | |
| 337 | |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic affirmation articulated autres avant-garde body bouche c'est chapter cited Cixous's contemporary corps creative critical culture d'une daughter death Denise Boucher desire difference discourse disruptive dreams Dupré écriture écriture féminine elle essay example exploration express fait female feminine feminism feminist feminist aesthetic femme fiction figure first-person French French Feminisms Freud genre Hélène Cixous identity images important inspired intertextuality invent J'ai jamais Jeanne Hyvrard L'Amèr l'autre l'écriture language langue Le Rire lesbian literary Livre Louise Dupré Lueur Madeleine Gagnon madness maternal memory Mère la mort metaphor Meurtritude mother Mothers of Invention mots n'est narrative narrator narrator's Nicole Brossard novel parole passage patriarchal PdeC peut phrase poetic poetry postmodern prose Prunes de Cythère qu'elle qu'il Quebec reader references Rire scene seems sense seule sexual speak strategies subversive symbolic syntax Tel Quel textual theory tion tout traditional transformation translation ventre verb veux vision voice woman womb women writers words writing