Gender, Rhetoric, and Print Culture in French Renaissance Writing (Cambridge Studies in French)

Floyd Gray explores how the treatment of controversial subjects in French Renaissance writing was affected by rhetorical conventions and the commercial requirements of an expanding publishing industry. Focusing on a wide range of discourses on gender issues--misogynist, feminist, autobiographical, homosexual and medical--Gray reveals the extent to which these marginalized texts reflect literary concerns rather than social reality. His new readings of Rabelais, Montaigne, Louise Labé and others, challenge the inherent anachronism of criticism that fails to take account of the cultural context of the period.