SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR 2E C: The Making of an Intellectual Woman - Hardcover

Moi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199238715 ISBN 13: 9780199238712

Publisher: OUP UK, 2008

Synopsis

In Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman Toril Moi shows how Simone de Beauvoir became Simone de Beauvoir, the leading feminist thinker and emblematic intellectual woman of the twentieth century. Blending biography with literary criticism, feminist theory, and historical and social analysis, this book provides a completely original analysis of Beauvoir's education and formation as an intellectual.
In The Second Sex, Beauvoir shows that we constantly make something of what the world tries to make of us. By reconstructing the social and political world in which Beauvoir became the author of The Second Sex, and by showing how Beauvoir reacted to the pressures of that world, Moi applies Beauvoir's ideas to Beauvoir's own life.

Ranging from an investigation of French educational institutions to reflections on the relationship between freedom and flirtation, this book uncovers the conflicts and difficulties of an intellectual woman in the middle of the twentieth century. Through her analysis of Beauvoir's life and work Moi shows how difficult it was - and still is - for women to be taken seriously as intellectuals. Two major chapters on The Second Sex provide a theoretical and a political analysis of that epochal text. The last chapter turns to Beauvoir's love life, her depressions and her fear of ageing.

In a major new introduction, Moi discusses Beauvoir's letters to her lovers Jacques-Laurent Bost and Nelson Algren, as well as her recently published student diaries from 1926-27.

About this title

Review

a landmark study on Simone de Beauvoir...a pivotal work for study of Beauvoir's autobiographical oeuvre (Susan Bainbridge, Modern and Contemporary France)

Moi's brilliant analysis of her subject is de Beauvoir criticism at its very best, demonstrating that the richly stimulating text of Simone de Beauvoir deserves to be widely and well read. (Ursula Tidd, THES)

From the Publisher

This book is being published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of de Beauvoir's birth on 9th January 2008

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP UK
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0199238715
• ISBN 13: 9780199238712
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 362