Before you leave...
Take 20% off your first order
20% off
Enter the code below at checkout to get 20% off your first order
Discover summer reading lists for all ages & interests!
Find Your Next Read

The beautiful Marquise de Banneville meets a handsome marquis, and they fall in love. But the young woman is actually a young man (brought up as a girl and completely in the dark about her--or his--true sex), while the marquis is actually a young woman who likes to cross-dress. Will they live happily ever after?
In the introduction, Joan DeJean presents the fascinating puzzle of authorship of this lighthearted gender-bending tale written in the late seventeenth century in France. Was it Fran輟is-Timol駮n de Choisy, an abbot who was happiest in drag? Marie-Jeanne L'H駻itier, an outspoken defender of women's writing of her day? Or Charles Perrault, L'H駻itier's uncle and the famous author of such fairy tales as "Sleeping Beauty"? DeJean argues that the tale was a collaboration of all three and discusses the permeable borderline between masculinity and femininity, transvestism, and tolerance--then and now.
Fran輟is-Timol駮n de Choisy was a French author. He was an influential figure in the seventeenth-century French ecclesiastical community. Marie-Jeanne L'H駻itierwas a French writer in the seventeenth century.L'H駻itier was a defender of women's writing and a significant writer in the fairy tale genre. Charles Perrault was a seventeenth-century French writer and a member of the Acad駑ie fran軋ise. Perrault's stories have been influential in developing the fairy tale as a literary genre. Steven Rendall is professor emeritus of Romance Languages at the University of Oregon. Joan DeJean's books reflect her areas of research: the history of women's writing in France (Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France); the history of sexuality (Fictions of Sappho, 1546-1937); the development of the novel (Literary Fortifications; Libertine Strategies); and the cultural history and the material culture of late 17th- and early 18th-century France (Ancients against Moderns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Si鐵le; The Essence of Style; The Age of Comfort).
Thanks for subscribing!
This email has been registered!
Take 20% off your first order
Enter the code below at checkout to get 20% off your first order