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The pursuit of women´s pleasures, often expected to be constrained under patriarchy, is potentially transgressive and linked to women´s emancipation in other realms. This book explores a wide range of examples of women and pleasure in French and francophone culture, from novels to stand-up comedy.

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Feminist approaches to questions of women, pleasure and transgression have generally been premised on the assumption that women´s pleasures are typically constrained - if not ignored, marginalized or forbidden - in patriarchal cultures. The naming, foregrounding and pursuit of women´s pleasures can therefore be deemed potentially transgressive and linked to women´s emancipation in other realms. The essays in this volume draw on a range of materials, from travel writing and the novel to film and stand-up comedy, addressing the specificity of French and Francophone approaches to women, pleasure and transgression across a range of historical contexts.

The volume is divided into three sections: intellectual and creative pleasures; normative pleasures, that is, pleasures conforming to women´s conventionally expected roles and status as well as to accepted views regarding race, national identity and sexuality; and perverse pleasures, that is, pleasures transgressive in their tendency to reject authority and norms, and often controversial in their "excessive" appetite for violence, sex, alcohol or food. In each case, questions are raised about how we approach such pleasures as feminist researchers, motivated in part by a desire to counter the notion of feminism and feminist research as something "dour" or joyless.

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CONTENTS: Chantal Chawaf: Écrivaine récalcitrante: entretien avec Maggie Allison - Kate Bonin: Growing up Camille: Gusto and Disgust in Mireille Best´s Camille en octobre (1988) - Rebecca J. Deroo: Pleasure, Pain and Subversion in Agnès Varda´s L´Opéra Mouffe [ Diary of a Pregnant Woman ] (1958) - Nelly Quemener: Une femme non respectable: de l´humour de Blanche Gardin aux ressorts de sa célébration - James Illingworth: Joséphine Bowes (1825-1874), Shopaholic or Patroness of the Arts? - Gabrielle Parker: Women and Pleasure in the Work of Madeleine Bourdouxhe - Isha Pearce: "Le Plaisir tout particulier": The Troubling Pleasures of Leisure and Labour in Marie NDiaye´s En famille (1990) and Ladivine (2013) - Elliot Evans: Liberté sexuelle : Pleasure and Identity in Catherine Millet´s La Vie sexuelle de Catherine M. (2001) - Maria Tomlinson: Subverting Patriarchal Norms(?): Women, Pleasure and the Menopause in Michèle Sarde´s Constance et la cinquantaine (2003) - Diana Holmes: Plaisir de lire : Women Readers and the Popular Bestsellers of Guillaume Musso - Dúnlaith Bird: Filles de joie, filles sans voix : Representing the Vagabonde in French Legislation and Literature - Melanie Hawthorne: Renée Vivien, frondeuse : A Woman Taking Pleasure in Behaving Badly - Shirley Jordan: Eating Between Pleasure and Discontent in Marie NDiaye´s "La Gourmandise" (1996) - Carrie Tarr: Perverse Pleasures: Women´s Takes on "Extreme" French Cinema - Siobhán McIlvanney: In Celebration of Celibacy: Sophie Fontanel´s L´Envie (2011).

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