ABSTRACT
In this chapter the Introduction to the monograph Marie Jeanne Riccoboni’s Epistolary Feminism: Fact, Fiction, and Voice Marijn S. Kaplan identifies the central importance of what she terms “epistolary feminism” in Riccoboni’s work, epistolarity used to promote proto-feminism. Through the juxtaposition of epistolary fiction in Riccoboni’s novels (Part One) and epistolary fact in her correspondence (Part Two), Kaplan analyzes the author’s thorough understanding and skillful manipulation of the relationship among fact and fiction, private and public, which facilitate the theory she develops progressively for the empowerment of women and the female voice in eighteenth-century patriarchal France. An overview of the monograph includes a summary of each of its seven chapters.
