LEADER 04299nam 22006972 450 001 9910306633403321 005 20231110230245.0 010 $a1-78694-952-0 035 $a(CKB)4100000007522833 035 $a(OCoLC)1084270115 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse82857 035 $a(UkCbUP)CR9781786949523 035 $a(ScCtBLL)98eb8601-ab7a-42f0-80df-c1b58cff7bd4 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC6898738 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL6898738 035 $a(oapen)https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/36434 035 $a(PPN)266492320 035 $a(EXLCZ)994100000007522833 100 $a20200608d2018|||| uy| 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur||||||||||| 181 $ctxt$2rdacontent 182 $cc$2rdamedia 183 $acr$2rdacarrier 200 10$aMiddlebrow matters $ewomen's reading and the literary canon in France since the Belle E?poque /$fDiana Holmes$b[electronic resource] 210 $aLiverpool$cLiverpool University Press$d2018 210 1$aLiverpool :$cLiverpool University Press,$d2018. 215 $a1 online resource (244 pages) $cdigital, PDF file(s) 225 0 $aContemporary French and francophone cultures ;$v57 300 $aTitle from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 07 Jul 2020). 311 $a1-78694-156-2 327 $aReclaiming the middlebrow -- The birth of French middlebrow -- Colette: The middlebrow modernist -- Interwar France: The case of the missing middlebrow -- The 'little world' of Franc?oise Sagan -- Literary prizes, women and the middlebrow -- Realism, romance and self-reflexivity: Twenty-first-century middlebrow -- Conclusion: Marie NDiaye's femme puissante -- a double reading. 330 $aAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.
Winner of the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies, 2018.
This is the first book to study the middlebrow novel in France. Middlebrow is a derogatory word that connotes blandness, mediocrity and a failed aspiration to 'high' culture. However, when appropriated as a positive term to denote that wide swathe of literature between the challenging experimentalism of the high and the formulaic tendency of the popular, it enables a rethinking of the literary canon from the point of view of what most readers actually read, a criterion curiously absent from dominant definitions of literary value. Since women have long formed a majority of the reading public, this perspective immediately feminises what has always been a very male canon. Opening with a theorisation of the concept of middlebrow that mounts a defence of some literary qualities disdained by modernism, the book then focuses on a series of case studies of periods (the Belle E?poque, inter-war, early twenty-first century), authors (including Colette, Ire?ne Nemirovsky, Franc?oise Sagan, Anna Gavalda) and the middlebrow nature of literary prizes. It concludes with a double reading of a single text, from the perspective of an academic critic, and from that of a middlebrow reader. 410 0$aContemporary French and Francophone Cultures 606 $aFrench fiction$y20th century$xHistory and criticism 606 $aFrench fiction$y21st century$xHistory and criticism 606 $aWomen$xBooks and reading$zFrance$xHistory$y20th century 606 $aWomen$xBooks and reading$zFrance$xHistory$y21st century 606 $aWomen and literature$zFrance$xHistory$y20th century 606 $aWomen and literature$zFrance$xHistory$y21st century 610 $aLanguages 610 $aLiterary studies 610 $afiction 610 $anovelists & prose writers 610 $aFrance 610 $aEnglish 610 $aFrench 615 0$aFrench fiction$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aFrench fiction$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aWomen$xBooks and reading$xHistory 615 0$aWomen$xBooks and reading$xHistory 615 0$aWomen and literature$xHistory 615 0$aWomen and literature$xHistory 676 $a843.91409 700 $aHolmes$b Diana$f1949-$0791951 801 0$bUkCbUP 801 1$bUkCbUP 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910306633403321 996 $aMiddlebrow matters$92264397 997 $aUNINA