👤 Hélène Cixous (1937-), French novelist

Published November 2007

Consuming Autobiographies: Reading and Writing the Self in Post-War France
Claire Boyle
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘Perhaps the most effective chapter is on Genet’s Miracle de la rose, Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs, and Journal du voleur, where resistance to a subjectification threatened by both social and literar y institutions (the prison and the confessional mode, respectively) is sought by tactics of abjection geared (not entirely successfully, Boyle argues) towards thwarting readerly identification.’ — Ian Maclachlan, Modern Language Review 104.4 (2009), 1154-55 (full text online)
  • ‘Attempts at writing autobiographies in the second half of the twentieth century, Claire Boyle shows in her concise, precise and deftly argued essay, have been subject to a curious paradox... The discrediting of autobiographical attempts has been paralleled by an increasing demand for first-person testimony narratives.’ — Karlis Racevskis, French Review 82.5, April 2009, 1065
  • ‘Une épreuve de force: le moi autobiographique, est-il contrôlé par l'autobiographe estimant que ce moi ne peut pas être entièrement connu, ou par le lecteur qui le 'consomme' afin de pouvoir s'identifier avec une personne supposée réelle?’ — Jeanette den Toonder, French Studies 65.2, April 2011, 269
  • ‘Boyle’s thoughtful and sophisticated study of autobiography brings an original focus on the role of the reader, and on the ways in which readers are interpellated and caricatured by, or even excluded from, certain forms of autobiographical writing... If we had thought that autobiography had had its day, Boyle demonstrates both that the genre itself is dynamic in ways we might not have previously imagined, and that the theory of autobiography continues to evolve in challenging and provocative ways.’ — Jane Hiddleston, Biography 31.4, Fall 2008, 763-65
  • ‘This is a well researched and broad-ranging work, and is a useful discussion of the survival of the autobiographical impulse despite the critical death of traditional autobiography... a stimulating study, which lucidly applies key theoretical concepts of 20th century French thought.’ — Dervila Cooke, Modern and Contemporary France 17.1, 2009, 83-121

Published July 2014

Echo's Voice: The Theatres of Sarraute, Duras, Cixous and Renaude
Mary Noonan
Research Monographs in French Studies 36

  • ‘Noonan’s book relies on close readings of extracts from the plays that she analyses, although she never loses sight of the importance of performance and the theatre. Noonan uses voice to situate the work of her playwrights in the context of theories of writing, and so is likely to appeal to scholars interested in the ways in which critical or philosophical thought is taken up differently by (women) writers working in a different genre.’ — Martina Williams, French Studies 69.2, April 2015, 262
  • ‘Noonan's fascinating and comprehensive work, solidly grounded in psychoanalytical theory, successfully uncovers the complexities, intentions, and modalities of the audio-vocal theatre she sets out to explore, revealing both the specificity of the authors she addresses and the overarching unity of their focus, as each one purposed to create a new form of auditory theatre.’ — Kelsey L. Haskett, H-France 15, 2015
  • ‘What is particularly appealing is that the emphasis on the materiality of the spoken word that might be enjoyed for its affective and rhythmic qualities indicates a turn towards affective modes of theatre. While studies such as Lehmann’s Post- dramatic Theatre discuss this experiential turn in relation to stage practices, it is here investigated from the border of the text.’ — Cara Berger, New Theatre Quarterly 31.3, August 2015, 296
  • ‘...While the parallels drawn between Sarraute, Duras and Cixous are interesting in their own right, the inclusion of a fourth, more recent playwright, Renaude, also illustrates the productive continu- ation of the experimentation of the earlier generation. For all of these reasons and more, Noonan’s study will be of interest to scholars of theatre and voice, of French women’s writing and of psychoanalytic theories of language, body and gender.’ — Julia Waters, Modern and Contemporary France 2015
  • ‘Mary Noonan’s deeply researched study offers some very provocative thinking about contemporary French theatre... Noonan’s subtle analyses of plays and her carefully researched descriptions of productions make palpable the uncanny ambience that she applauds in these works.’ — Judith Miller, Modern Drama 59.1, Spring 2016
  • ‘A thought-provoking perspective on the plays of four French women writers whose theatrical innovations have largely remained overlooked.’ — Richard J. Gray II, Irish Journal of French Studies 15, 2016, 141-42

Published September 2022

Labours of Attention: Work, Class and Society in French and Francophone Literature and Culture
Adam Watt
Legenda (General Series)