Julia Dobson

The theatre, both as metaphor and practice, is central to Cixous' writing, yet has rarely been accorded the importance it merits within her oeuvre. The constant concerns of her work are represented and explored in plays which address individual and collective stories of difference, exile, love and writing. This book offers a clear contextualisation of Cixous' theatre alongside detailed analyses of individual plays and argues for a reading of Cixous' theatre as a dramatisation of the writing process.

The Scene of Writing

Hélène Cixous and the Theatre

Gill Rye

This issue of Paragraph, 'Revisiting the Scene ofWriting: New Readings of Cixous', aims both to reflect and to foster the extraordinary ongoing impact of Helene Cixous's writing across a wide spectrum of academic disciplines and literary forms

Paragraph Volume 23, Issue 3

Revisiting the Scene of Writing: New Readings of Cixous

This book provides the first detailed analysis of the work of four important contemporary directors whose work falls between the reductive labels of "auteur cinema" and "popular cinema." Their work is contextualized within this timely investigation into the shifting relationship between the privileged status of the auteur and questions of genre, gender, and cinematic production in France today. This important contribution to understanding the shifting landscapes of contemporary French film identifies an essential intermediacy in the films of these directors, which works to undo a series of dominant oppositions, generic template and contestation, public collectivity and personal intimacy, to offer a new perspective on the location of the political in contemporary French cinema. The four chapters provide detailed critical analysis of films by Dominique Cabrera, Laetitia Masson, Noémie Lvovsky, and Marion Vernoux, and present common thread including the possible construction of social intimacy, the political demystification of romance narratives and the role of nostalgia, to argue that their work uses popular genres in order to challenge dominant cultural representation that resonates beyond the immediate parameters of contemporary French cinema. This book will be of interest to researchers working in French and European cinema, to students of Film Studies and French and Francophone Studies, and to film enthusiasts.

Dominique Cabrera, Noémie Lvovsky, Laetitia Masson and Marion Vernoux

Negotiating the Auteur

This book provides the first detailed analysis of the work of four important contemporary directors whose work falls between the reductive labels of 'auteur cinema' and 'popular cinema'. Their work is contextualised within this timely investigation into the shifting relationship between the privileged status of the auteur and questions of genre, gender and cinematic production in France today. This important contribution to understanding the shifting landscapes of contemporary French film identifies an essential intermediacy in the films of these directors, which works to undo a series of dominant oppositions, generic template and contestation, public collectivity and personal intimacy, to offer a new perspective on the location of the political in contemporary French cinema. The four chapters provide detailed critical analysis of films by Dominique Cabrera, Laetitia Masson, Noémie Lvovsky and Marion Vernoux, and present common thread including the possible construction of social intimacy, the political demystification of romance narratives and the role of nostalgia, to argue that their work uses popular genres in order to challenge dominant cultural representation that resonates beyond the immediate parameters of contemporary French cinema. This book will be of interest to researchers working in French and European cinema, to students of Film Studies and French and Francophone Studies, and to film enthusiasts.

Julia Dobson

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