Countering the Culture : The Novels of Christiane Rochefort

This is the first full-length study in any language of the writings of a remarkable figure in French literary and cultural history, author of nine prose fiction works between 1958 and 1988. Despite establishment recognition and a popular mass-market following, Christiane Rochefort has hitherto received surprisingly little critical attention. Her fiction forms an easily approachable learning tool for all students of post-war French politics and culture; the bestseller, Les Petits Enfants du siècle, is a set text in schools and universities in the UK and USA. This novel of growing up in the working class high-rises of Paris, written in the language of the streets, provides a vivid, child-centred view of a young's girl's social, political and sexual awakening.

 

The Novels of Christiane Rochefort looks at each novel in turn and applies close attention to the narrative sophistication and political subversion of the books. Certain contemporary themes run through her work: the status of children, language as instrument of oppression and subversion, homosexuality, incest, child abuse. Each chapter of this book provides in-depth cultural and socio-political background material, and delivers a study that will be of great interest and value to students across a wide range of literary and cultural disciplines.

Margaret-Anne Hutton is Lecturer in French at the University of Nottingham.