French Culture Ii

The programme is entitled: La parole des femmes
It is divided into three parts:
A. La prise de parole publique: les femmes et les revues
B. La parole engagée: the example of La Fronde and the birth of feminism
C. La parole niée: Carmen entre Romantisme et féminicide

The course aims to investigate the change in women's self-perception and their intellectual and social role in the period between the 19th century and the First World War through the analysis of the female word. It will first consider the cultural panorama that sees the predominant presence of the female figure in every artistic and cultural manifestation in the Belle Époque in which women's conquest of the editorial space is placed. We will then move on to the activism of women journalists, literary figures and magazine editors between the end of the 19th century and 1914. The last module will instead focus on a novel of 1845 that portrays an autonomous, independent and apparently indomitable female character, who is yet victim of feminicide. The work will be analysed from a cultural point of view, highlighting behaviours and attitudes at the basis of a patriarchal, prevaricating, male dominated mentality, still relevant today, despite the achievements of the 20th and 21st centuries. We will also analyse recent phenomena of unconscious cultural conditioning and the non-recognition of women's identitary autonomy.