Projects per year
Abstract
This study examines one of the major sources which Mary Hays used for her Female Biography (1803): Ann Thicknesse’s Sketches of the Lives and Writings of the Ladies of France (1778; 1780–1), an unacknowledged ‘plagiarisation’ of Joseph La Porte’s Histoire littéraire des femmes françoises (1769). Hays’s critical and scholarly engagement with this work for her French entries, as well as with Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697), yields a complex map of cross-cultural transactions through its embedded layers of gendered peritextuality. The aim of this article is thus to explore the ways in which Thicknesse paved the way for Hays’s broader historiographical work, and to reflect on their convergences and divergences. There ensues a series of questions which will be addressed in the course of this analysis. For example, Hays did not include all the women found in Thicknesse’s dictionary: so which women did she omit, and can we surmise why? And when she cites Thicknesse’s entries, what type of editorial addition or correction does she insert? Finally, what does this tell us about Hays’s stance as a critic and editor dedicated to the cause of women, and about the revisionist vein of her historiographical enterprise?
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 167-185 |
Journal | Women's Writing |
Volume | 25 |
Issue number | 2 |
Early online date | 23 Oct 2017 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2018 |
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- 1 Active
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Learning to see the power of women in Europe and to from the Renaissance to the Present
8/09/16 → …
Project: University Awarded Project Funding
Activities
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Member of The Center for The New Historia Scholars Council
Severine Genieys-Kirk (Member)
Apr 2017 → …Activity: Consultancy types › Contribution to the work of national or international committees and working groups
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Seminario Internacional Mary Hays and Women's Biographies
Severine Genieys-Kirk (Invited speaker)
24 Apr 2015Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in workshop, seminar, course
Profiles
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Severine Genieys-Kirk
- School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures - Senior Lecturer
Person: Academic: Research Active