Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-244) and index.
Recuperating women and the man behind the screen: (un)classical bodies in Les Caquets de l'Accouchée (1622) -- The daughters' sacrifice and the paternal order in Racine's Iphigénie en aulide -- The female mind reformed: pedagogical counter-discourses, radical and regressive, under Louis XIV -- The heroine at war: self-divisions in La Guette's extraordinary memoirs -- From the maternal metaphor to metonymy and history: seventeenth-century discourses of maternity and the passion of Mme de Sévigné -- Overreading, without doubt: ambiguity and irony in La Princesse de Montpensier