The Gendered Lyric: Subjectivity and Difference in Nineteenth-Century French Poetry

Gretchen Schultz

Table of Contents

ix Preface
xiii Acknowledgments

1 Introduction
1 Does Poetry Have a Gender?
6 Gendered Forms, Lyric Subjects

19 Part 1: Romanticism’s Genders

21 Chapter One: Femininity and the Renewal of the Lyric
22 The Lyrical Lexicon
29 The Poet’s Masculinity
36 The Exclusion of Femininity

43 Chapter Two: “Women’s Poetry”: The Case of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore
45 Critical Ambivalence
55 Tearful Beginnings
61 A Watery Landscape
72 Gender and Form

81 Part 2 Parnassian Impassivity and Frozen Femininity 

83 Introduction 

87 Chapter Three: Leconte de Lisle’s Hardening Arteries
88 Crystallized Criticism
98 Poesis perfecta 

111 Chapter Four: Parnassian Obsessions
112 Théophile Gautier
125 Sculpted Femininity
133 Frigid Form

140 Chapter Five: Moving Statues: Les Parnassiennes
141 Cherchez la femme
145 Les Parnassiennes par elles-mêmes
147 Louise Colet
154 Nina de Villard
162 Léocadie Penquer 

169 Part 3: Symbolist Fluidity

171 Introduction

178 Chapter Six: Baudelaire’s Frontiers
180 Poetic Af€liations
188 Vaporization and Centralization
195 “La musique”

208 Chapter Seven: Loose Ends
209 Verlaine’s Sexualities
232 Krysinska’s Women

247 Conclusion: Poetry Matters

251 Appendix: Poems
281 Notes
301 Bibliography
321 Index