Marianne Charrier-Vozel: "Féminité et masculinité selon Madame Riccoboni et Laclos: la pluralité des genres"
Abstract:
In 1782 Laclos compares les Liaisons dangereuses to the novels of Mrs Riccoboni in his correspondence. He highlights two acts of writing, one masculine and the other one feminine, which suggest two distinctive horizons of expectation. The issue of realistic literature attributed to male authors as opposed to idealistic and sentimental literature attributed to female authors, should therefore be examined under a different light, that of narratology and theories of enunciation. The study of the characters' interaction in the two different types of romantic universe shows how the choice of a specific enunciative stance, between irony and humour, leads to two distinctive acts of reading: humour expresses an «underlying sympathy», a «certain modesty» and establishes a link between the novelist, her characters and readers, whereas the enunciative stance of irony adopted by Laclos sets a distance between the subject and the object of his discourse. In Mrs. Riccoboni's final novel, Milord Rivers is the original incarnation of the «androgynous» who questions a generic vision of the world. The novelist expresses the hope of reconciliation between sexes and feminine happiness founded on friendship and solidarity, values which are impossible in Laclos's writings.
AsK, jan 2011
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