Gender, Authenticity, And the Missive Letter in Eighteenth-century France: Marie-anne De La Tour, Roussear's Real-life Julie

In 1761, Marie-anne De La Tour Wrote To Jean-jacques Rousseau Claiming To Be The Real-life Embodiment Of His Fictional Heroine, Julie Of La Nouvelle Heloise. The Two Went On To Exchange 175 Letters Over Some Fifteen Years. Since Its First Publication In 1803, This Correspondence Has Been Cited As Evidence Of Widely Varying Conclusions: The Neurotic Meanness Of Rousseau's Character, The Abuse To Which Rousseau Himself Was Subjected By The French Reading Public, Even The Psychosis Eighteenth-century Women Readers Risked By Cultivating Loss Of Self Through Novel Reading. De La Tour Has Been Diagnosed As The Very Type Of The Hysterical Woman Reader, Quite Incapable Of Separating The Author From The Man.. This Study Will Particularly Appeal To Scholars Of Gender Studies, But Will Also Interest Eighteenth-century Specialists, Reader-response Critics, And Any Critic Interested In The Epistolary Genre. Dr. Mcalpin Compares The Evidence Of De La Tour's Authorial Consciousness With That Of Far Better Known Letter Writers, Both Women (sevigne, Graffigny, Lespinasse, Roland, Suzanne Necker) And Men (boswell, In Particular). The Book Also Introduces The Exchange Of Letters To The English-speaking Community Of Eighteenth-century Scholars. While The De La Tour-rousseau Exchange Was Republished In French In 1998, It Is Not Yet Available In English. This Book Provides Translations Of The First, Most Significant Letters In Its Appendix.--book Jacket. Claire And Julie Write Saint-preux -- Going Public: Mme De***, Amie De Jean-jacques -- The Sanctity Of The Reader's Response: Eighteenth-century Critical Assessments Of The Missive Letter -- Authenticity Devalued: Contemporary Epistolary Theory -- Postscript: De La Tour, James Boswell, Henriette ***, And Gender Theory. Mary Mcalpin. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 241-248) And Index. "Though usually classified as a Romantic, Blake subverts and dissolves the binaries on which Romanticism turns: self and other, art and nature, country and city. Rather than reject city outright like many of his contemporaries, Blake embraces it as the intricate workshop of human imagination. Each chapter of this book focuses on a specific text of Blake's that illustrates a particular conception of metaphorical embodiment of the city. These shifting metaphors emphasize the construction of all human environments and the need for imaginative labor to build and interpret them. This study seeks to bridge a gap between "transcendent" and "historicist" readings of Blake while at the same time challenging assumptions that still color our view of the city in the twenty-first century."--Pub. desc Contents 5 Acknowledgments 7 Introduction: Julie Lives to Love You 11 Claire and Julie Write Saint-Preux 27 Going Public: ‘‘Mme de ***, Amie de Jean-Jacques’’ 61 The Sanctity of the Reader’s Response: Eighteenth-Century Critical Assessments of the Missive Letter 100 Authenticity Devalued: Contemporary Epistolary Theory 134 Postscript: De La Tour, James Boswell, Henriette ***, and Gender Theory 160 Appendix: The Rousseau-de La Tour Correspondence, September 28, 1761–January 15, 1762 186 Notes 224 Bibliography 241 Index 249