Forensic Storytelling and the Literary Roots of Early Modern Feminism

Barbara Abrams is Professor of French and Women’s and Gender Studies and is Chair of the Department of History, Language, and Global Culture at Suffolk University, Boston. Her academic work focuses on French literature of the Enlightenment and Women’s and Gender Studies. Her recent publications include several articles on women’s epistolary writing in eighteenth-century France, the Factum as Fiction, and a new critical focus on the novels of Marie-Madeleine Bonafon. Her previous books include a multigraph project titled Reframing Rousseau’s Le Lévite d’Ephraïm: The Hebrew Bible, Hospitality, and Modern Identity (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment) and Le Bizarre and Le Décousu in the Novels and Theoretical Works of Denis Diderot: How the Idea of Marginality Originated in Eighteenth-Century France, which examines the background of our modern concept of marginality by focusing on Diderot’s materialist philosophy.

This important archival study opens up the rich possibilities of what Abrams' calls "forensic storytelling." This strategy of scholarly engagement is the author’s new way into the story of early modern women’s writing as a literature of resistance in 18th century France....Abrams brings together the history of 18th century French women and the literature by and about these women. As a French literary scholar of the 18th century, she offers a window into the time period. Through careful and insightful close readings, as well as elegant translations of the handwritten archival texts at the heart of this book, she makes these women’s lives accessible to scholars and students alike. Not only does she supply readers with the French and the English translations of key texts from these women's case files, but we also see the text in a robust array of photographs of these very documents. --Laura Levitt, Professor of Religion, Jewish Studies, and Gender, Temple University, USA

• AcknowledgmentsPrefaceIntroductionChapter One: Forensic Storytelling and Antimonarchical Epistolarity Chapter Two: Les Causes Célèbres, Factum or Fiction? Or: “That’s What He Said!”Chapter Three: Tanastès est Satan: Authenticity and Audacity in the Writings of Marie-Madeleine BonafonChapter Four:Excess or Success? The Case of Mme Geneviève de GravelleChapter Five: “What’s in a Name?”: The Case of Angélique SchwabConclusionIndex