A rich collection of plays by French and francophone women writers in English translation

Winner of the 2021 Best International Book Award from the Mormon History Association In the late nineteenth century, numerous French plays, novels, cartoons, and works of art focused on Mormons. Unlike American authors who portrayed Mormons as malevolent “others,” however, French dramatists used Mormonism to point out hypocrisy in their own culture. Aren't Mormon women, because of their numbers in a household, more liberated than French women who can't divorce? What is polygamy but another name for multiple mistresses? This new critical edition presents translations of four musical comedies staged or published in France in the late 1800s: Mormons in Paris (1874), Berthelier Meets the Mormons (1875), Japheth’s Twelve Wives (1890), and Stephana’s Jewel (1892). Each is accompanied by a short contextualizing introduction with details about the music, playwrights, and staging. Humorous and largely unknown, these plays use Mormonism to explore and mock changing French mentalities during the Third Republic, lampooning shifting attitudes and evolving laws about marriage, divorce, and gender roles. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

In the Middle Ages, religious theater was a popular medium for both the edification and the entertainment of the public. This book centers on seven of the forty "Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages" plays, produced annually for the Goldsmiths' Guild of Paris and surviving in the 14th-century Cange Manuscript. This is the first in-depth study of a subset performed between 1368 and 1379 about women unjustly accused of adultery or monstrous birth, or threatened with rape or incest. Surprisingly modern themes of female empowerment, self-mutilation, and cross-dressing emerge as the women are forced into exile to escape death, but are eventually vindicated with the miraculous help of Our Lady. The book demonstrates that in addition to the plays' religious significance and literary qualities, they engage with the goldsmiths' spiritual and material concerns, reflect their urban culture, and promote their socio-political agenda during the war and turmoil of 14th-century France. "...the reader benefits greatly from the combination of plot resumes, critical commmentary, and insightful interpretation that Harvey's own writing style makes it a pleasure to read". Beverly J. Evans, State U. of NY at Geneseo, Dalhousie French Studies 96, 2011

Black women living in the French empire played a key role in the decolonial movements of the mid-twentieth century. Thinkers and activists, these women lived lives of commitment and risk that landed them in war zones and concentration camps and saw them declared enemies of the state. Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel mines published writings and untapped archives to reveal the anticolonialist endeavors of seven women. Though often overlooked today, Suzanne Césaire, Paulette Nardal, Eugénie Éboué-Tell, Jane Vialle, Andrée Blouin, Aoua Kéita, and Eslanda Robeson took part in a forceful transnational movement. Their activism and thought challenged France's imperial system by shaping forms of citizenship that encouraged multiple cultural and racial identities. Expanding the possibilities of belonging beyond national and even Francophone borders, these women imagined new pan-African and pan-Caribbean identities informed by black feminist intellectual frameworks and practices. The visions they articulated also shifted the idea of citizenship itself, replacing a single form of collective identity and political participation with an expansive plurality of forms of belonging.

Four Caribbean Women Playwrights aims to expand Caribbean and postcolonial studies beyond fiction and poetry by bringing to the fore innovative women playwrights from the French Caribbean: Ina Césaire, Maryse Condé, Gerty Dambury, Suzanne Dracius. Focussing on the significance of these women writers to the French and French Caribbean cultural scenes, the author illustrates how their work participates in global trends within postcolonial theatre. The playwrights discussed here all address socio-political issues, gender stereotypes, and the traumatic slave and colonial pasts of the Caribbean people. Investigating a range of plays from the 1980s to the early 2010s, including some works that have not yet featured in academic studies of Caribbean theatre, and applying theories of postcolonial theatre and local Caribbean theatre criticism, Four Caribbean Women Playwrights should appeal to scholars and students in the Humanities, and to all those interested in the postcolonial, the Caribbean, and contemporary theatre.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.