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Reading women's writing:
female success, influence, reputation



This part of the site will present the reception side of the dialogues undertaken by women authors, as they are documented in the database WomenWriters. The word "reader" is used in a broad sense. Firstly, it includes men and women. Secondly, those men and women can be more than readers: they can have commented or adapted the texts, reviewed or translated them, and so on. For Dutch reading (which has been documented in the first place), here some examples.

The French novelist Françoise de Graffigny, for instance, has been reacted to by the following categories of Dutch readers (as far as information has been found up to now):


These various forms of reception need to be considered separately and to be compared, in order to see in what ways women authors or their texts have been received. This comparison is made possible by the database structure.


QUANTITATIVE APPROACHES

Readers can certainly be classified, just as we did on the "reading side", according to their national identities. It is possible to mention for example the number of 728 German receptions, figuring today in the database, on a total of 18.410 reception records. This figure does not provide much more than reflect the work done up to now. It has no other significance than suggesting to specialists of German international literary contacts that they might add more information.

Figures concerning international reception are interesting only when related to one particular work, author or group of works or authors (on the production side) and to a country (on the receiving side) for which a certain number of sources has been consulted, leading to substantial data entry.


QUESTIONS TO BE ANSWERED


SvD, October 2009 (not finished)




  • Note that when arriving in the database WomenWriters your status will be "not logged on", meaning that your access to the database is limited. For complete access (and participation in the project), contact Suzan van Dijk.



  • The reception side >

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