Into Print: The Production of Female Authorship in Early Modern France

by Leah L. Chang

Overview

This book examines the role that book production played in shaping notions of female authorship in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century France. Through close analysis of volumes attributed to Helisenne de Crenne, Louise Labé, la Dame des Roches, and Marie de Gournay against the historical backdrop of the early French book market, Chang shows how the female author acts as a figure who often has diverse functions and meanings, in printed books of the period. Focusing on how the female author’s gender, authority, and appeal are crafted in the creation of the material volume, Into Print shows how the production of female-authored volumes influenced early modern concepts of both gender and authorship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611491135
Publisher:	University Press Copublishing Division
Publication date:	06/01/2009
Pages:	284
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Leah L. Chang is assistant professor of French at the George Washington University.

Editorial Reviews

One comes to the end of the book with a rich appreciation of the strategic interest, for early modern printers as for writers, of producing a female-authored text. Chang's research is deep and meticulously presented…. Leah Chang's book is…an extraordinary accomplishment. It fixes our attention on the multiple ways in which the interactions between author, printer, editor, and reader were orchestrated to produce a female-authored work in this era that first concerned itself with defining what a 'gendered' text could be.

H-France Review

One comes to the end of the book with a rich appreciation of the strategic interest, for early modern printers as for writers, of producing a female-authored text. Chang's research is deep and meticulously presented…. Leah Chang's book is…an extraordinary accomplishment. It fixes our attention on the multiple ways in which the interactions between author, printer, editor, and reader were orchestrated to produce a female-authored work in this era that first concerned itself with defining what a 'gendered' text could be.

H-France