Description
Book SynopsisAn engaging account of women’s travels in the early modern period. This book showcases three Frenchwomen who ventured far from home at a time when such traveling was rare. In 1639, Marie de l’Incarnation embarked for New France where she founded the first Ursuline monastery in present-day Canada. In 1750, Madame du Boccage set out at the age of forty on her first “grand tour.” She visited England, the Netherlands, and Italy where she experienced firsthand the intellectual liberty offered there to educated women. As the Reign of Terror gripped France, the Marquise de la Tour du Pin fled to America with her husband and their two young children, where they ran a farm from 1794 to 1796. The writings these women left behind detailing their respective journeys abroad represent significant contributions to early modern travel literature. This book makes available to anglophone readers three texts that are rich in both historical and literary terms.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
The Other Voice
Marie Guyart de l’Incarnation (1599–1672)
Anne Marie Fiquet Du Boccage (1710–1802)
Henriette-Lucie Dillon, Marquise de La Tour du Pin (1770–1853)
Experiencing Otherness
It will be there that I find bliss . . .
Let us step outside our homeland, there will be a new being . . .
The happiest moment of my existence . . .
The Journey Narrative: Forms and Content
The Missionary Letter
The Familiar Letter
The Autobiographical Memoir: A Hybrid Form
Travel Writing and Gender as a Field of Investigation and a Source for Teaching
Note on the Translations
Travel Narratives
Marie de l’Incarnation, Correspondence
Madame Du Boccage, Letters on England, Holland, and Italy
Madame de La Tour du Pin, Journal of a Fifty-Year-Old Woman
Appendix 1: Cécile de Sainte-Croix, The Story of Her Crossing and Arrival in Quebec (September 2, 1639)
Appendix 2: Glossary of Places
Appendix 3: Table of Currencies and Values
Appendix 4: Chronology
Bibliography
Index of Names
Thematic Index
