Homme” peut-il vouloir dire “Femme”? Gender and Translation in Seventeenth-Century French Moral Literature
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8910485 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Pierre Zoberman (0000-0003-4521-8057, Université Paris 13 Sorbonne-Paris-Cité, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 231-252 |
| Publication date | 2014-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Literature Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0010-4132 • E-ISSN: 1528-4212 |
| Publisher | The Pennsylvania State University Press (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.5325/complitstudies.51.2.0231 |
| OpenAlex | W2082649772 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 5 |
Can homme mean femme? Should supposedly gender-neutral terms such as homme(s), in the works of seventeenth-century French moralists (notably Pascal and La Bruyère), be rendered into un-gendered forms like humankind when translated into English? What are the presuppositions and consequences of the choices available to translators? Exploring the use, not only of l'homme/les hommes, but also personne (person) and gens (people), and ostensibly gender-neutral pronouns—on (one)—the article shows how deceptive this gender neutrality is and how the moralists' texts constantly shift from uses of homme as humankind to homme as the male of the species. Choosing gender-neutral options (e.g., humankind) may help make texts of early modern France more germane to the concerns of readers today. However, it obscures the linguistic sleight-of-hand and the exclusion of woman from those discourses as anything but a negative figure. Paradoxically, moralists subvert the gender binary. If women appear as a foil for men, men, viz. the males of the species, as a whole fail to live up to moralists' standards—thus sharing the shortcomings of women. Therefore, the article argues for fidelity to the non-neutral forms as a way to point to the very process of gender definition and, in particular, to the discounting of women prevalent in the works of French moralsists from the early modern period
Art · Contradiction · Epistemology · Humanities · Linguistics · Literature · Neutrality · Presupposition · French Literature and Criticism · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical and Scientific Studies · Philosophy
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |