Claire de Duras

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Claire de Duras

Duchess Claire de Duras (born March 23, 1777 in Brest , Finistère , † January 16, 1828 in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes ) was a French writer and salonnière .

Live and act

As Claire Louise Rose Bonne , she was the daughter of Admiral Armand de Kersaint . Soon after the revolution began , her father fell out of favor with the Girondins . When he was sentenced to death by the Welfare Committee and guillotined on December 4, 1793 , Claire and her mother fled to live with relatives in Martinique . When it became dangerous for the family there a short time later, they emigrated to the USA .

Back to Europe they came to England via Switzerland and settled in London . There Claire married the French politician Amédée-Bretagne Malo de Durfort on November 27, 1797 and had two daughters with him: Claire-Louise (1798-1883) and Claire-Henriette (1799-1863).

In 1808 Claire de Duras returned to France with her family and settled in Paris . During the restoration, her friendship with François-René de Chateaubriand quickly opened up various literary circles and she very quickly became an important salonnière of her time.

reception

As an author, de Duras is now almost forgotten: her work is difficult to classify between the Enlightenment and early romanticism . Your literary salon is still considered the center of social (and intellectual) life during the Restoration period. As a highly educated, writing woman, she was in contact with important artists - Rosalie de Constant , Anne Louise Germaine de Staël , and others. a. - of her time, indirectly shaped the work of Stendhal and often had to defend her novels against criticism from fellow writers.

Characteristic of her work is her preoccupation with the subjects of guilt, love, self-destruction and death. In all three novels, a relationship between two lovers for external (origin / status) or internal motives (personal secret / homosexuality?) Cannot be realized. At the end of the work there is the death of the protagonists as a symbol of their own negation or as a transcendent path to salvation. The author not only questions the concepts of love and identity, but also turns against the norms and morals of her own social class.

The writer John Fowles translated her first novel into English and this work then influenced his novel The French Lieutenant's Woman .

Works

literature

Essays
  • Chantal Bertrand-Jennings: Condition féminine et impuissance sociale. Les romans de la duchesse de Duras . In: Romantisme , Vol. 18 (1989), Issue 63, pp. 39-50, ISSN  0048-8593
  • Juliette Decreus: Madame la Duchesse de Duras . In: Sainte-Beuve et la critique des auteurs féminines . Éditions Boivin, Paris 1949 (also dissertation, University of Paris)
  • Gillian Gill: Rosalie de Constant and Claire de Duras. An epistolary friendship . In: Swiss-French Studies / Études Romandes , Vol. 2 (1981), Issue 2, pp. 91–117, ISSN  0226-5869
  • Doris Y. Kadish et al. a .: "Ourika's" three versions. A Comparison . In: Françoise Massardier-Kenney (Ed.): Translating slavery. Gender and race in French women's writing, 1783-1823 . University Press, Kent 1994, ISBN 0-87338-498-9 , pp. 217-228.
  • Doris Y. Kadish: Rewriting women's stories. "Ourika" and "The French lieutenants'a woman" . In: South Atlantic Review , Vol. 62 (1997), No. 2, pp. 74-87, ISSN  0038-2868
  • Roger Little: Condé, Brontë, Duras, Beyala. Intertextuality or Plagiarism? In: French Studies Bulletin , Vol. 72 (1999), pp. 13-15, ISSN  0262-2750
  • Rose Winegarten: Women and Politics. Madame de Duras . In: New Criterion , Vol. 19 (2000), Issue 3, pp. 21-28, ISSN  0734-0222
Monographs
  • Agénor Bardoux: La duchesse de Duras. Études sociales et politiques . Lévy, Paris 1898.
  • Chantal Bertrand-Jennings: D'un siècle l'autre. Romans de Claire de Duras (Critiques; Vol. 3). Jaignes, La Chasse au Snark 2001, ISBN 2-914015-08-9 .
  • Grant Crichfield: Three novels of Madame de Duras. "Ourika", "Édouard", and "Olivier" . DeGruyter Mouton, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-90-279-3432-1 .
  • Odile Métais-Thoreau: Une femme rare. In the pas de la duchesse de Duras . Éditions du Petit Pavé, Brissac-Quincé 2010, ISBN 978-2-84712-238-1 .
  • Gabriel Pailhès: La Duchesse de Duras et Châteaubriand . Perrin, Paris 1910.
  • Sylvie Romanowski: Through strangers' eyes. Fictional foreigners in old regime France . University Press, West Lafayette, Ind. 2005, ISBN 978-1-55753-406-4 .
  • Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve: Portraits de femme . Garnier, Paris 1881.
    • German: portraits of women from four centuries Georg Müller Verlag, Munich 1914 (4 vols.)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Duras, Claire de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kersaint, Claire Louise Rose Bonne Lechat de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer and salonnière
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1777
PLACE OF BIRTH Brest
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 1828
Place of death Nice