French Graduate Seminars, Trinity 2025, Seminar 1

Location: Old Library, All Souls College

Speakers: Oriane Guiziou-Lamour (University of Virginia) and Stéphanie Arc (CY Cergy Paris Université): 

Oriane Guiziou-Lamour (University of Virginia): ‘Sex Under the Guillotine: Women, Sexuality, Prison, and the French Revolution’

Abstract:
The literary genre of récits d’emprisonnements flourished in France during the Terror of 1793–1794, giving rise to a form of writing that, less than ten years after 1789, was already negotiating its relationship with the legacy of the French Revolution. Prisons during the Terror held particular appeal for writers of sentimental and erotico-sentimental fiction, as they offered a space to explore the intersections of imprisonment, community, and sexuality. This paper examines how the French Revolution shaped representations of imprisonment and women’s sexuality in works by Giroust de Morency, Choiseul-Meuse, and Guénard de Méré, published between 1797 and 1800: Coralie, ou le danger de se fier à soi-même (1797), Irma, ou les malheurs d’une jeune orpheline (1799), and Illyrine ou l’Écueil de l’inexpérience (1799–1800). The heroines’ experiences of sexuality amid the turmoil of the Terror differ markedly from the sexual norms of the ancien régime. While one might rightly assume that these upheavals led to increased sexual violence against women, these texts also—perhaps unexpectedly—present prison as a space where female desire can be expressed and liberated. The creation of utopian communities, sealed off from the chaos of revolutionary France, becomes a means not only of enacting the ideals of liberté and fraternité, but also of engaging in a collective reflection on time, trauma, and healing.

Biography:
Oriane Guiziou-Lamour is a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of French at the University of Virginia (USA). She is also affiliated with the research group “Histoire du genre” (Centre des Recherches Historiques) at the EHESS, and a Praxis Fellow in Digital Humanities. She studies late-eighteenth century erotic novels written by women authors. Her dissertation is entitled “Le libertinage interdit : le roman érotico-sentimental ou développement et disparition d’une expression féminine de la sexualité, 1797-1815”. More broadly, her interests lie at the intersection of gender, power, and sexuality, with a particular emphasis on lesbian representation, sadomasochism, digital decay, and the macabre. Her most recent article, “Suzanne Giroust de Morency ou ‘Illyrine l’évaporée’ : de la confusion (auto)biographique au fantasme littéraire,” was published in the journal Dix-huitième siècle. She also writes fiction; her short story “Passer dans tes quatre estomacs” was recently published in the volume Destructions et suites (Rennes, Éditions Goater).

Stéphanie Arc (CY Cergy Paris Université): ‘Between ethics and poetics: the challenges of writing documentary fiction’

Abstract:
‘Documentary novels’ are narratives based upon an investigation (in Emmanuelle Pireyre’s case, on the Internet, in Olivia Rosenthal and Cloé Korman’s cases, in real life). They might be ‘non-fiction novels’ or ‘documentary fictions’. The latter (‘fiction documentaire’ as Pireyre named them after Jacques Rancière) is defined as a combination of fiction and non-fiction, creating a blurry mix where readers can not tell the difference between what is ‘true/factual’ and what has been invented by the author. Each kind of ‘documentary novel’ raises specific ethical questions throughout the creative process.

Having completed the creative part of my thesis in creative writing, a documentary fiction entitled ‘Paillages’ (‘Mulch’), I will propose some reflections towards an ethics of writing such a narrative, which I call an ‘approximative’ or ‘fuzzy ethics’. Based on my own experience of carrying out a series of interviews for my novel and fusing them with fictional events in the process of writing, as well as Olivia Rosenthal, Joy Sorman and Cloé Korman's accounts of their own research and writing process, I will define ‘approximative ethics’ as a third way between strict censorship (principles strictly defined and applied from a superior/external point of view) and the idea that fiction writers would be above all ethical considerations.

An ethics led by tact (Roland Barthes), aiming at ‘justesse’ (rather than ‘justice’, according to Arno Bertina), which requires ‘le sens des situations’ (as described by the French ethnologist Jeanne Favret-Saada, for example), would respect both the freedom that fiction writers need to create their work and the people whose lives and words they cite or rewrite.

Biography:
Stéphanie Arc is a French author, currently undertaking doctoral studies in Creative Writing at Cergy Paris Université. She wrote two novels: Quitter Paris (Rivages, 2020) and Debout sur les falaises (Rivages, 2026). She previously obtained a degree in philosophy at the Sorbonne University and has been a scientific journalist for the CNRS. She published a collection of interviews with philosophers (Comment je suis devenu philosophe, Cavalier bleu, 2008). Her research interests include feminism and sexualities (Identités lesbiennes, Cavalier bleu, 2024, 4th ed.) and she was a member and vice-president of the association ‘SOS homophobie’.