Associate Professor of French Cheryl Morgan will be the next speaker in the Humanities Forum series, on Monday, April 15, at 4:10 p.m. in the Red Pit. Her topic is titled "Impromptu, or What's Wrong With This Picture, Thinking about French Women Writers and Humor."
The 1991 film Impromptu might seem an unlikely departure point for a discussion of 19th century French women writers and humor. It is, however, a delightful romp through French Romantic territory and a portrait of that period's most notorious and exceptional woman writer, George Sand. Alienated and ironic artists grapple with gullible patrons and new market forces even as the real center of interest lies in the budding romance between Sand and Frédéric Chopin. Screenplay writer Sarah Kernochan (Marjoe, 9 1/2 Weeks, All I Wanna Do) may have prided herself on creating a "strong female character" with her George Sand, but the film's representation of French women writers operates along assumptions that hark back to the 19th century's own reception of what it variously termed bas-bleus (blue-stockings), Muses, and femmes d'esprit (women of wit). In fact, what Impromptu does and doesn't say about writing women reminds us that after more than 30 years of feminist revision of the canon, even extremely clever films still identify with the male artist.
What's wrong with this picture then? Missing from most current readings of 19th-century French culture are funny women. Drawing upon both Impromptu and modern scholarship on French humor, Morgan will explore the reasons why the late 20th century still sides with the likes of Musset and Liszt and knows little of the femmes d'esprit of the 1830s.
