Retif's rendering of the speech of working-class women in Les Contemporaines du commun offers unique access to a world neglected by many of the author's own contemporaries. However, in the two chapters titled "Les jolies crieuses," the authenticity of this approach is mediated not only by Retif's personal preoccupations but by a long tradition of other artistic representations of urban food hawkers in collections of words and images known as Les Cris de Paris. In providing a transcription of the crieuses' speech in these chapters, Retif seems to offer an accurate documentation of what he hears, but in further characterizing them as seductive sirens, he actively aestheticizes and objectifies these hard-working women. At the same time, however, in allowing them agency to narrate their own lifestories, Retif invites his heroines to reconstitute themselves as subjects, showing these supposedly simple women to be capable of complex, creative uses of language.
原文链接
分享
引用
