Pets and their Couples

Baroque novels focus on the psychology of love, while love in the context of nature is the subject of the pastoral genre. Introducing animals to such texts proves challenging and involves a reversal of scale and comedy. The conceptions of the "couple" and the status of the "pet" are investigated.

Auteur
Dr. Servanne Woodward teaches eighteenth-century literature at the University of Western Ontario after obtaining her degrees from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has published on Chardin, Vigée-Lebrun, Marivaux, Rousseau, Diderot, and women educators. She studied history of arts at the Université d'Aix-en-Provence.

Contenu
Contents: «The Bird-Organ» («La Serinette») 1751-1753, by Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699-1779) - «It's not the cat!» The subject of Mr. and Mistress Henley's fight - «Caress Fidele for me» Paul et Virginie by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814) - «Are you a person?»: libertines and sentimentaires according to Pierre Carlet Chamblain de Marivaux (1688-1763).