French 340 - TOPC: 17TH/18TH C LIT-ENLIGHTN

Topics course: Pre-marital sex, adultery, divorce, birth control, cross-dressing, women’s education, women’s right to political representation—these controversial gender issues were at the core of debates over women’s changing legal, social, and cultural status and of their role in the family in 18th-century France. We will examine women’s changing role as represented in the fiction and philosophical texts of the French Enlightenment. Readings from l’Abbé Prévost, Françoise de Graffigny, Diderot, Rousseau, Isabelle de Charrière, Laclos, Olympe de Gouges, the Chevalier d'Éon, the Encyclopédie, and some legal documents and treatises.