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I Suffer, Therefore I Am: Engaging with Empathy in Contemporary French Women's Writing

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Kathryn Robson

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Abstract

The increase in the visibility of autobiographies and fiction recounting suffering in this century has gone hand-in-hand with a notable emphasis on the possibilities and limits of empathy. Contemporary French women’s writing inscribes and interrogates the imperative to witness and respond to another subject’s pain and raises questions about the relation between empathy and reading. Engaging with a range of recent texts, including work by Marie Darrieussecq, Amélie Nothomb, Camille Laurens, Delphine de Vigan and Christine Angot, and representations of different kinds of suffering (including eating disorders, the death of a child, and sexual abuse), this book engages productively with notions of empathy in relation to gender and alterity as well as with the question of what is at stake in reading narratives of someone else’s pain.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Robson K

Series Editor(s): Knight D

Publication type: Authored Book

Publication status: Published

Series Title: Research Monographs in French Studies

Year: 2019

Number of Pages: 152

Print publication date: 23/04/2019

Acceptance date: 12/01/2019

Publisher: Legenda

Place Published: Cambridge

Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item

ISBN: 9781781886755


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