Far from Home in Early Modern France: Three Women’s Stories (Volume 92) (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series)

An engaging account of women’s travels in the early modern period. This book showcases three Frenchwomen who ventured far from home at a time when such traveling was rare. In 1639, Marie de l’Incarnation embarked for New France where she founded the first Ursuline monastery in present-day Canada. In 1750, Madame du Boccage set out at the age of forty on her first “grand tour.” She visited England, the Netherlands, and Italy where she experienced firsthand the intellectual liberty offered there to educated women. As the Reign of Terror gripped France, the Marquise de la Tour du Pin fled to America with her husband and their two young children, where they ran a farm from 1794 to 1796. The writings these women left behind detailing their respective journeys abroad represent significant contributions to early modern travel literature. This book makes available to anglophone readers three texts that are rich in both historical and literary terms. Cover 1 Title Page 4 Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Introduction 10 The Other Voice 10 Marie Guyart de l’Incarnation (1599–1672), The Mother of New France 14 Anne-Marie Fiquet Du Boccage (1710–1802), Poet, Translator, Salonnière, and Traveler 19 Henriette-Lucie Dillon, Marquise de La Tour du Pin (1770–1853), a Survivor of the Reign of Terror 22 Experiencing Otherness 26 It will be there that I find bliss . . . 26 Let us step outside our homeland, there will be a new being . . . 32 The happiest moment of my existence . . . 40 The Journey Narrative: Forms and Content 49 The Missionary Letter 49 The Familiar Letter 52 The Autobiographical Memoir: A Hybrid Form 57 Travel Writing and Gender as a Field of Investigation and a Source for Teaching 64 Note on the Translations 68 Travel Narratives 70 Marie de l’Incarnation, Correspondence 70 Madame Du Boccage, Letters on England, Holland, and Italy 110 Madame de La Tour du Pin, Journal of a Fifty-Year-Old Woman, 1778–1815 182 Appendix 1: Cécile de Sainte-Croix, The Story of Her Crossing and Arrival in Quebec (September 2, 1639) 236 Appendix 2: Glossary of Places 246 Appendix 3: Table of Currencies and Values 256 Appendix 4: Chronology 258 Bibliography 268 Index of Names 296 Thematic Index 302 "Travel accounts by three French women who journeyed through Europe, New France, and the new United States in the 17th- and 18th-centuries, their experiences documented in letters and memoir"-- Provided by publisher