Colette (European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism) Book

Colette (1873-1954) was a prolific author-her most famous works include Cheri, The Cat, and Gigi. Interlacing commentary on the life and work of this notorious French novelist, Kristeva provides us with an elegant and sophisticated critique filled with psychoanalytic insight. Working from her extensive knowledge of linguistics, Kristeva focuses particularly on the language Colette used to "say the unsayable and name the unnameable." Colette celebrated sexual pleasure and invented a language for it at a time when female writers were inhibited about writing on the topic. She married three times, had male and female lovers, and for a time supported herself as a mime, dancing semi-nude in music halls throughout France. When she died, she received the first state funeral the French Republic had ever given a woman. In her writing, she was inspired by entertainers, courtesans, an aristocratic Parisian lesbian subculture, and fin de siècle gay aesthetes. She admired those who lived on the sexual edge. She was accused of moral corruption in intellectual matters-she published in pro-Vichy anti-Semitic journals during the Occupation even as she fought to keep her Jewish third husband from being deported. Kristeva's Colette will be considered a major breakthrough in understanding one of the great creative minds of the twentieth century.Read More