La fiction de Madame de Genlis, espace d’interrogation

Author(s)

  • Isabelle Tremblay

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18352/relief.847

Keywords:

Genlis, novel, heroines, virtue, autonomy

Abstract

The novel constitutes an ideal genre in which to discuss a central question in the eighteenth century: virtue. As opposed to her contemporaries, Mme de Genlis depicts virtue as a state of mind attained through independence and self-confidence rather than through the atonement of one’s faults. How do her heroines realize their potential? Are they able to find a middle ground between their perception of their roles and identity and the expectations that weigh on them? What paths are available to them?

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Author Biography

  • Isabelle Tremblay
    Isabelle Tremblay is associate professor at the Department of French studies at the Royal Military College of Canada. She is the author of Le bonheur au féminin. Stratégies narratives des romancières des Lumières (2012) and has published in the journals Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Women in French Studies, Orbis litterarum, Symposium and @nalyses. She is currently working on a book about the absent interlocutor in monophonic eighteenth-century epistolary novels.

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Published

2013-09-18

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2013): Madame de Genlis and enlightenment thought

Section

Articles - thematic dossier

License

All articles published in RELIEF appear in Open Access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0). Under this licence, authors retain ownership of the copyright of their article, but they allow its unrestricted use, provided it is properly cited.

How to Cite

Tremblay, I. (2013) “La fiction de Madame de Genlis, espace d’interrogation”, RELIEF - REVUE ÉLECTRONIQUE DE LITTÉRATURE FRANÇAISE, 7(1), pp. 19–32. doi:10.18352/relief.847.