ABSTRACT
The academic tribute to Elizabeth Fallaize which took place in London in October 2010 was led by friends and colleagues who worked closely with her in all sorts of contexts, and engaged with the fields she made her own: Simone de Beauvoir studies, short fiction, and women's writing. Editors and authors all came across the vexed question of nomenclature, a question itself central to Elizabeth's own critical engagement with the textual politics of gender. Women carry the name of their father, not their mother, and on marriage are normally expected, in most cultures, to replace this with the name of their husband. The memorial conference was a collective expression of mourning, esteem and celebration of the life and scholarship of an exceptional woman. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book allows people to build on that scholarship with set of new interventions in the field of French studies.
