L’Intime épistolaire (1850-1900): genre et pratique culturelle
Author: Jelena Jovicic
Date Of Publication: Apr 2010
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-1867-4
Isbn: 1-4438-1867-4
L’Intime épistolaire (1850-1900): genre et pratique culturelle is a study of private letters by eight Nineteenth-Century French authors—Flaubert, Zola, Sand, Baudelaire, Maupassant, Eberhardt, Bashkirtseff and Edmond de Goncourt—during the period of 1850 to 1900. Through in-depth analyses of these intriguing documents, the book demonstrates that personal correspondences cast fresh light on the concept of intimacy in Nineteenth-Century French culture. Since epistolary writing implies a necessary exchange between lived experience and the written word, the book’s intention is also to interpret “letter practice” as a specific textual form, with its own generic expectations and constraints which are distinct from other life-writing genres such as the diary, the autobiography, and the memoir.

Divided into five chapters, the study begins with a short introduction to the “culture of individuality.” The four subsequent chapters explore the poetics of epistolary writing, including significant topics, the various roles of the letter writer, epistolary pacts and the problem of the signature. Addressing a wide range of epistolary situations, including daily life, health, money problems, love, travel, and even suicide notes, the book also offers new critical perspectives on six of the most interesting manuscript letters that have been chosen from the examined sources.

Jelena Jovicic teaches French literature and culture at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. She holds a PhD from the University of Western Ontario. Her publications focus on Nineteenth-Century French Literature and critical theory.

“L’Intime épistolaire (1850-1900): genre et pratique culturelle is a valuable investigation of the construction of intimacy as modelled through the epistolary form in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Situating her work within the current theoretical corpus on intimacy, on epistolarity, and on the public/private structuring of the social–from Habermas’s theorizing of the public sphere through to Foucault’s concept of a ‘technology of the self’–Jovicic analyzes how the letter form is produced in the intersection between ‘private’ subjectivity and cultural practice. . . In its combining of precise archival research with theoretical insight, L’Intime épistolaire offers the best kind of grounded and original scholarship.”

- Chris Roulston, French Studies and Women’s Studies and Feminist Research, University of Western Ontario

“In addressing the subject of the late-19th century epistolary form, Jelena Jovicic has set herself a redoubtable and many-faceted task. Her dense and sophisticated (yet extremely readable) book nevertheless achieves its many goals, sweeping away any lingering perception of writers’ correspondence either as a kind of “slipper-wearing” (semi-)literary form or as a simple repository of documentary information, and demonstrating most convincingly that the modern researcher (be s/he literary critic, social theorist or cultural historian) should examine the letter, in all its cultural and poetic presence, as a genre unto itself: a vital and, in the case of the latter half of the 19th century, curiously undervalued form of literary self-representation which must take its place alongside the genres of autobiography and diary.”

- Jeremy Worth, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Windsor

«Prenant pour objets d’étude les correspondances de Sand, Flaubert, Hugo, Baudelaire, Eberhardt, Daudet, Goncourt et Zola, cet ouvrage fait revivre les dessous du monde littéraire du XIXe siècle, tout en les analysant avec beaucoup de finesse. S’appuyant sur une solide bibliographie, il s’avère porteur d’une grande richesse théorique, mêlant (et parfois conciliant) savamment les approches, comme la pragmatique, la sémiotique, l’histoire ou la philosophie, et les courants de pensées de Darwin à Cixous. Avec son approche pluridisciplinaire, il apportera une très belle contribution aux études de l’épistolaire et du XIXe siècle, et saura captiver un public averti.»

- Roxane Petit-Rasselle, Department of French, Franklin & Marshall College

«Aborder l’intime épistolaire tel qu’inscrit dans les correspondances de la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle, c’est faire la lumière sur plusieurs sujets à la fois car, au-delà du projet au départ individuel et intime de l’écriture épistolaire, ce sont une époque et une société qui sont mises à l’étude.»

- Philippe Basabose, Department of French and Spanish, Memorial University

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Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)