First Advisor

Gina Greco

Date of Publication

6-30-1995

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.) in French

Department

French

Language

English

Subjects

Mme de Grafigny (Françoise d'Issembourg d'Happoncourt) 1695-1758. Lettres d'une Péruvienne, Utopias in literature, Feminism in literature

DOI

10.15760/etd.6788

Physical Description

1 online resource (100 p.)

Abstract

This thesis examines Francoise de Graffigny's eighteenthcentury novel, Lettres d'une Peruvienne. focusing on the aspects that demonstrate its consideration as a utopian work, or moreover, as a feminist utopian work. The first chapter is developed from the premise about utopian fiction that the author's life must be considered since it is out of his or her "lived social experience" that utopian visions are born. Utopias, many have argued, are born out of reactions to social inequities and injustices. This chapter thus presents and analyzes, Graffigny's life especially where it shows needs for a future utopia. The second chapter explores definitions of utopias, especially feminist literary utopias, in order to build a framework for analyzing Graffigny's work. It will be shown that this novel exhibits many of the traits found in a woman's utopia as opposed to those found in a man's. The third and fourth chapters directly analyze the text, Lettres d'une Peruvienne, using the research from the previous chapters as the groundwork to draw out the utopian aspects of the novel.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this dissertation or thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to pdxscholar@pdx.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/28541

Download

Share

COinS