Marianne Legault, associate professor of French, recently published a new book about literary discourses on female friendship and intimacy in seventeenth-century French literature.
The book takes as its premise the view that unlike men, women have been denied for centuries the possibility of same-sex friendship. Legault explores the effect of this on female friendship and homoerotic relationships as thematic narratives in works by male and female writers in seventeenth-century France.
Legault’s work in this book adds to the research in lesbian and queer studies, fields in which pre-eighteenth-century French literary texts are rare.
Female Intimacies in Seventeenth-Century French Literature is now available from Ashgate Publishing.