«For those readers seeking engaging, informative, and provocative insights into three of the most interesting and readable of contemporary French women writers – Christiane Baroche, Hélène Cixous, and Paule Constant –, Gill Rye’s volume…provides a delightful and perceptive introduction.» (Lynn Penrod, Women in French Studies)
«Rye’s book deploys what, for this reader, constitutes the best kind of critical practice: a practice that attends intuitively to the workings of literary artefacts but brings those workings into dialogue with a range of critical discourses, drawn from the fields of psychoanalysis, philosophy, sociology, psychology and reader-response theory. [...] ‘Reading for Change‘ is an extremely welcome addition to criticism on French women’s textuality, illuminating its own potential for change and evolution.» (Alex Hughes, French Studies)
Reading for Change
Interactions between Text and Identity in Contemporary French Women’s Writing (Baroche, Cixous, Constant)
von Gill RyeHow does reading literature change our life? How does it change the way we see each other? In what ways can reading impact on who we are and what we will become?
Drawing creatively on major theorists from French and Anglo-American feminisms through psychoanalysis, sociology and psychology to contemporary literary theory, the author articulates reading as a process of change. Relations between text and reader, individual and collective identities, self and other, are thought through in a sustained development of a politics of reading based on the model of the dialogue. Without losing sight of diversity and subjectivity in reading, this book explores the transformative potential of literature through themes of loss, maternity and difference in original readings of some post-1980 French fiction. Anglophone readers are introduced to the rich œuvre of Christiane Baroche and to the accessible yet thought-provoking novels of Paule Constant (winner of the 1998 prix Goncourt) as well as to new critical analyses of Hélène Cixous’s later fictions.