Education of Women in Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-century French Literature

Download Education of Women in Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-century French Literature PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 97 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (1 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Education of Women in Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-century French Literature by : Armelle Tsafack Wiggins

Download or read book Education of Women in Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-century French Literature written by Armelle Tsafack Wiggins and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis is about the mistreatment and miseducation of women during the seventeenth and the eighteenth-century in French literature. The idea is to convey to the readers what women had to go through when wanting to be further educated. It is about inequality of women during these centuries and how the protagonist of each tale overcame all obstacles to become self educated and independent.

Teaching Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century French Women Writers

Download Teaching Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century French Women Writers PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Modern Language Association of America
ISBN 13 : 9781603290968
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (99 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Teaching Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century French Women Writers by : Faith E. Beasley

Download or read book Teaching Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century French Women Writers written by Faith E. Beasley and published by Modern Language Association of America. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France has been celebrated as the period of conversation. Salons flourished and became an important social force. Women and men worked together, in dialogue with their contemporaries, other texts, and their culture to create novels, political satire, drama, poetry, fairy tales, travel narratives, and philosophy. Yet the inclusion of women's contributions, only recently recovered, changes the way we conceive of the period that constitutes one of the building blocks of French national identity and Western civilization, and teachers are often unsure how and where to incorporate the texts into their courses. Teaching Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century French Women Writers attempts to reconstruct these conversations by integrating women's work into classrooms across the curriculum. The works of French women writers are crucial to courses on the early modern period and enliven many others—whether on literature, history, women's history, the history of science, philosophy, women's and gender studies, or European civilization. The essays included in part 1 provide necessary background and help instructors identify places in their courses that could be enriched by taking women's participation into account. Contributors in part 2 focus on some of the central writers and genres of the period, including Lafayette, Charrière, and Graffigny, the epistolary novel, convent writing, and memoirs. The essays in part 3 offer concrete descriptions of courses that place women's texts in dialogue with those of their male colleagues or with historical issues.

Citoyennes

Download Citoyennes PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Delaware
ISBN 13 : 1611493552
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (114 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Citoyennes by : Annie Smart

Download or read book Citoyennes written by Annie Smart and published by University of Delaware. This book was released on 2011-12-23 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did women have a civic identity in eighteenth-century France? In Citoyennes: Women and the Ideal of Citizenship in Eighteenth-Century France, Annie Smart contends that they did. While previous scholarship has emphasized the ideal of domestic motherhood or the image of the republican mother, Smart argues persuasively that many pre-revolutionary and revolutionary texts created another ideal for women – the ideal of civic motherhood. Smart asserts that women were portrayed as possessing civic virtue, and as promoting the values and ideals of the public sphere. Contemporary critics have theorized that the eighteenth-century ideal of the Republic intentionally excluded women from the public sphere. According to this perspective, a discourse of “Rousseauean” domestic motherhood stripped women of an active civic identity, and limited their role to breastfeeding and childcare. Eighteenth-century France marked thus the division between a male public sphere of political action and a female private sphere of the home. Citoyennes challenges this position and offers an alternative model of female identity. This interdisciplinary study brings together a variety of genres to demonstrate convincingly that women were portrayed as civic individuals. Using foundational texts such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, or on Education (1762), revolutionary gouaches of Lesueur, and vaudeville plays of Year II of the Republic (1793/1794), this study brilliantly shows that in text and image, women were represented as devoted to both the public good and their families. In addition, Citoyennes offers an innovative interpretation of the home. Through re-examining sphere theory, this study challenges the tendency to equate the home with private concerns, and shows that the home can function as a site for both private life and civic identity. Citoyennes breaks new ground, for it both rectifies the ideal of domestic Rousseauean motherhood, and brings a fuller understanding to how female civic identity operated in important French texts and images.

The Education of Women in the French Literature of the Seventeenth Century

Download The Education of Women in the French Literature of the Seventeenth Century PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 86 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (437 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Education of Women in the French Literature of the Seventeenth Century by : Rachel Augusta Breathwit

Download or read book The Education of Women in the French Literature of the Seventeenth Century written by Rachel Augusta Breathwit and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Female Intimacies in Seventeenth-Century French Literature

Download Female Intimacies in Seventeenth-Century French Literature PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN 13 : 1409471039
Total Pages : 501 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (94 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Female Intimacies in Seventeenth-Century French Literature by : Dr Marianne Legault

Download or read book Female Intimacies in Seventeenth-Century French Literature written by Dr Marianne Legault and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2012-12-28 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining literary discourses on female friendship and intimacy in seventeenth-century France, this study takes as its premise the view that, unlike men, women have been denied for centuries the possibility of same sex friendship. The author explores the effect of this homosocial and homopriviledged heritage on the deployment and constructions of female friendship and homoerotic relationships as thematic narratives in works by male and female writers in seventeenth-century France. The book consists of three parts: the first surveys the history of male thinkers' denial of female friendship, concluding with a synopsis of the cultural representations of female same-sex practices. The second analyzes female intimacy and homoerotism as imagined, appropriated and finally repudiated by Honoré d'Urfé's pastoral novel, L'Astrée, and Isaac de Benserade's seemingly lesbian-friendly comedy, Iphis et Iante. The third turns to unprecedented depictions of female intimate and homoerotic bonds in Madeleine de Scudéry's novel Mathilde and Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force's fairy tale Plus Belle que Fée. This study reveals a female literary genealogy of intimacies between women in seventeenth-century France, and adds to the research in lesbian and queer studies, fields in which pre-eighteenth-century French literary texts are rare.

Education of French Women in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Download Education of French Women in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 154 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (179 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Education of French Women in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries by : Jeanne Masteller

Download or read book Education of French Women in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries written by Jeanne Masteller and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Education of Women in the French Literature of the Seventeenth Century (Classic Reprint)

Download The Education of Women in the French Literature of the Seventeenth Century (Classic Reprint) PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9780259935360
Total Pages : 122 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (353 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Education of Women in the French Literature of the Seventeenth Century (Classic Reprint) by : Rachel Augusta Breathwit

Download or read book The Education of Women in the French Literature of the Seventeenth Century (Classic Reprint) written by Rachel Augusta Breathwit and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2017-05-21 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Education of Women in the French Literature of the Seventeenth Century One of the most marked influences upon the movement towards woman's education in France may be found in the great body of the women known as the Precieuses. To go back to history*, we find that it was not until the reign Of Francis I that women took their real place in court and commenced to entertain each other and to receive the visits of gentlemen. Henry Iv's entry into court life brought with it a number of rough soldiers fresh from civil wars, accustomed to careless manners and coarse senti ments. Then it was that Mme. De Rambouillet, an italian-french woman of high ideals, unable any longer to bear the rude sensuality of the court, remodeled her home, doing away with all secret tete a-tgts corners, and began to receive her friends in her noted Blue room or salon. The clever and cultivated society which grew up around her salon and others like it became known as that of the precieux. Their avowed purpose was to free the French lan guage of its coarseness, to purify French customs and social life, and to aid in the development of literature. Why is it that this influence had to come from a foreigner and from a lady of the court Was the pure life of the convent, where so many girls received their education, unable to elevate and ennoble French life? No, the convents did not do this, for the simple reason that they did not. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Women of Modern France

Download Women of Modern France PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781721842919
Total Pages : 144 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (429 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Women of Modern France by : Hugo P. (Hugo Paul) Thieme

Download or read book Women of Modern France written by Hugo P. (Hugo Paul) Thieme and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-06-27 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women of Modern France by Hugo P. (Hugo Paul) Thieme Chapter I Woman in politics French women of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, when studied according to the distinctive phases of their influence, are best divided into three classes: those queens who, as wives, represented virtue, education, and family life; the mistresses, who were instigators of political intrigue, immorality, and vice; and the authoresses and other educated women, who constituted themselves the patronesses of art and literature. This division is not absolute by any means; for we see that in the sixteenth century the regent-mother (for example, Louise of Savoy and Catherine de' Medici), in extent of influence, fills the same position as does the mistress in the eighteenth century; though in the former period appears, in Diana of Poitiers, the first of a long line of ruling mistresses. Queen-consorts, in the sixteenth as in the following centuries, exercised but little influence; they were, as a rule, gentle and obedient wives-even Catherine, domineering as she afterward showed herself to be, betraying no signs of that trait until she became regent. The literary women and women of spirit and wit furthered all intellectual and social development; but it was the mistresses-those great women of political schemes and moral degeneracy-who were vested with the actual importance, and it must in justice to them be said that they not infrequently encouraged art, letters, and mental expansion. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales

Download Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 1496223934
Total Pages : 190 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (962 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales by : Bronwyn Reddan

Download or read book Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales written by Bronwyn Reddan and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2020-12 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love is a key ingredient in the stereotypical fairy-tale ending in which everyone lives happily ever after. This romantic formula continues to influence contemporary ideas about love and marriage, but it ignores the history of love as an emotion that shapes and is shaped by hierarchies of power including gender, class, education, and social status. This interdisciplinary study questions the idealization of love as the ultimate happy ending by showing how the conteuses, the women writers who dominated the first French fairy-tale vogue in the 1690s, used the fairy-tale genre to critique the power dynamics of courtship and marriage. Their tales do not sit comfortably in the fairy-tale canon as they explore the good, the bad, and the ugly effects of love and marriage on the lives of their heroines. Bronwyn Reddan argues that the conteuses' scripts for love emphasize the importance of gender in determining the "right" way to love in seventeenth-century France. Their version of fairy-tale love is historical and contingent rather than universal and timeless. This conversation about love compels revision of the happily-ever-after narrative and offers incisive commentary on the gendered scripts for the performance of love in courtship and marriage in seventeenth-century France.

Women, Books, Sex, and Education in 17th-century French Literature

Download Women, Books, Sex, and Education in 17th-century French Literature PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (295 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Women, Books, Sex, and Education in 17th-century French Literature by : Ruth Ellen Larson

Download or read book Women, Books, Sex, and Education in 17th-century French Literature written by Ruth Ellen Larson and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Women of Modern France

Download Women of Modern France PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781725128095
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (28 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Women of Modern France by : Hugo P. (Hugo Paul) Thieme

Download or read book Women of Modern France written by Hugo P. (Hugo Paul) Thieme and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women of Modern France By Hugo P. (Hugo Paul) Thieme French women of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, when studied according to the distinctive phases of their influence, are best divided into three classes: those queens who, as wives, represented virtue, education, and family life; the mistresses, who were instigators of political intrigue, immorality, and vice; and the authoresses and other educated women, who constituted themselves the patronesses of art and literature. This division is not absolute by any means; for we see that in the sixteenth century the regent-mother (for example, Louise of Savoy and Catherine de' Medici), in extent of influence, fills the same position as does the mistress in the eighteenth century; though in the former period appears, in Diana of Poitiers, the first of a long line of ruling mistresses. Queen-consorts, in the sixteenth as in the following centuries, exercised but little influence; they were, as a rule, gentle and obedient wives-even Catherine, domineering as she afterward showed herself to be, betraying no signs of that trait until she became regent. The literary women and women of spirit and wit furthered all intellectual and social development; but it was the mistresses-those great women of political schemes and moral degeneracy-who were vested with the actual importance, and it must in justice to them be said that they not infrequently encouraged art, letters, and mental expansion. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

The Education of Women in Seventeenth Century France

Download The Education of Women in Seventeenth Century France PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 152 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (32 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Education of Women in Seventeenth Century France by : Mary C. Giblin

Download or read book The Education of Women in Seventeenth Century France written by Mary C. Giblin and published by . This book was released on 1941 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Conduct Books for Girls in Enlightenment France

Download Conduct Books for Girls in Enlightenment France PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317162307
Total Pages : 479 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (171 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Conduct Books for Girls in Enlightenment France by : Nadine Berenguier

Download or read book Conduct Books for Girls in Enlightenment France written by Nadine Berenguier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the eighteenth-century, at a time when secular and religious authors in France were questioning women’s efforts to read, a new literary genre emerged: conduct books written specifically for girls and unmarried young women. In this carefully researched and thoughtfully argued book, Professor Nadine Bérenguier shares an in-depth analysis of this development, relating the objectives and ideals of these books to the contemporaneous Enlightenment concerns about improving education in order to reform society. Works by Anne-Thérèse de Lambert, Madeleine de Puisieux, Jeanne Marie Leprince de Beaumont, Louise d'Epinay, Barthélémy Graillard de Graville, Chevalier de Cerfvol, abbé Joseph Reyre, Pierre-Louis Roederer, and Marie-Antoinette Lenoir take up a wide variety of topics and vary dramatically in tone. But they all share similar objectives: acquainting their young female readers with the moral and social rules of the world and ensuring their success at the next stage of their lives. While the authors regarded their texts as furthering the common good, they were also aware that they were likely to be controversial among those responsible for girls' education. Bérenguier's sensitive readings highlight these tensions, as she offers readers a rare view of how conduct books were conceived, consumed, re-edited, memorialized, and sometimes forgotten. In the broadest sense, her study contributes to our understanding of how print culture in eighteenth-century France gave shape to a specific social subset of new readers: modern girls.

Female Intimacies in Seventeenth-Century French Literature

Download Female Intimacies in Seventeenth-Century French Literature PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317136039
Total Pages : 261 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (171 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Female Intimacies in Seventeenth-Century French Literature by : Marianne Legault

Download or read book Female Intimacies in Seventeenth-Century French Literature written by Marianne Legault and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining literary discourses on female friendship and intimacy in seventeenth-century France, this study takes as its premise the view that, unlike men, women have been denied for centuries the possibility of same sex friendship. The author explores the effect of this homosocial and homopriviledged heritage on the deployment and constructions of female friendship and homoerotic relationships as thematic narratives in works by male and female writers in seventeenth-century France. The book consists of three parts: the first surveys the history of male thinkers' denial of female friendship, concluding with a synopsis of the cultural representations of female same-sex practices. The second analyzes female intimacy and homoerotism as imagined, appropriated and finally repudiated by Honoré d'Urfé's pastoral novel, L'Astrée, and Isaac de Benserade's seemingly lesbian-friendly comedy, Iphis et Iante. The third turns to unprecedented depictions of female intimate and homoerotic bonds in Madeleine de Scudéry's novel Mathilde and Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force's fairy tale Plus Belle que Fée. This study reveals a female literary genealogy of intimacies between women in seventeenth-century France, and adds to the research in lesbian and queer studies, fields in which pre-eighteenth-century French literary texts are rare.

Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women

Download Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135963150
Total Pages : 2050 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (359 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women by : Cheris Kramarae

Download or read book Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women written by Cheris Kramarae and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-04-16 with total page 2050 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For a full list of entries and contributors, sample entries, and more, visit the Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women website. Featuring comprehensive global coverage of women's issues and concerns, from violence and sexuality to feminist theory, the Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women brings the field into the new millennium. In over 900 signed A-Z entries from US and Europe, Asia, the Americas, Oceania, and the Middle East, the women who pioneered the field from its inception collaborate with the new scholars who are shaping the future of women's studies to create the new standard work for anyone who needs information on women-related subjects.

Women, Gender and Disease in Eighteenth-Century England and France

Download Women, Gender and Disease in Eighteenth-Century England and France PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1443861219
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (438 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Women, Gender and Disease in Eighteenth-Century England and France by : Ann Kathleen Doig

Download or read book Women, Gender and Disease in Eighteenth-Century England and France written by Ann Kathleen Doig and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-06-02 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on encyclopedias, medical journals, historical, and literary sources, this collection of interdisciplinary essays focuses on the intersection of women, gender, and disease in England and France. Diverse critical perspectives highlight contributions women made to the scientific and medical communities of the eighteenth century. In spite of obstacles encountered in spaces dominated by men, women became midwives, and wrote self-help manuals on women’s health, hygiene, and domestic economy. Excluded from universities, they nevertheless contributed significantly to such fields as anatomy, botany, medicine, and public health. Enlightenment perspectives on the nature of the female body, childbirth, diseases specific to women, “gender,” sex, “masculinity” and “femininity,” adolescence, and sexual differentiation inform close readings of English and French literary texts. Treatises by Montpellier vitalists influenced intellectuals and physicians such as Nicolas Chambon, Pierre Cabanis, Jacques-Louis Moreau de la Sarthe, Jules-Joseph Virey, and Théophile de Bordeu. They impacted the exchange of letters and production of literary works by Julie de Lespinasse, Françoise de Graffigny, Nicolas Chamfort, Mary Astell, Frances Burney, Lawrence Sterne, Eliza Haywood, and Daniel Defoe. In our post-modern era, these essays raise important questions regarding women as subjects, objects, and readers of the philosophical, medical, and historical discourses that framed the project of enlightenment.

French Literature

Download French Literature PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0745657192
Total Pages : 261 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (456 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis French Literature by : Alison Finch

Download or read book French Literature written by Alison Finch and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first to offer a cultural history of French literature from its very beginnings, analysing the relationship between French literature and France’s evolving power structures from the Middle Ages through to the present day. It shows the political connections between the elite literature of France and other aspects of its culture, from racism, misogyny, tolerance and liberal reform to song, street performance, advertising and cinema. The nation’s literature contributed to these and was shaped by them. The book highlights the continuities and the unique fault-lines in the society that, over a millennium, has produced ‘French culture’. It looks at France’s early and continuing struggle for a national identity through both its language and its literature, and it shows that this struggle co-exists with openness to other cultures and a bawdy or subtle rebelliousness against the Church and other forms of authority. En route it takes in cuisine, gardens and the French tradition in mathematics. The survey provides an accessible approach to key issues in the history of French culture as well as a wide context for specialists.