Published Books
Monographs
Rococo Fiction in France, 1600-1715: Seditious Frivolity
Bucknell University Press, 2013
Rococo Fiction in France reconfigures the history of the "long eighteenth century" by revealing the rococo as a literary phenomenon that characterized a range of experimental texts from the end of the French Renaissance to the eve of the French Revolution. Tracing the literary rococo's evolution from the late 1500s to the early 1700s, and exploring its radicalization during the 1670s, 80s, and 90s, Allison Stedman unearths the seventeenth century rococo's counter-vision for the trajectory of the French monarchy and the dawn of the French Enlightenment.
Reviews
"By focusing on innovative publishing strategies and texts celebrating individual creativity rather than absolutist values, the author reinvigorates the field of early modern studies."
Choice 50.10 (June 2013). Selected as one of Choice's "Outstanding Academic Titles of 2013"
"This thought-provoking study aims to rehabilitate a branch of French prose writing that has been traditionally overlooked or treated with disdain."
Perry Gethner, Oklahoma State University; French Forum Winter 2014 Vol. 39, No. 1
"A fascinating study that opens up and complicates our understanding of the literary field of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century France, Rococo Fiction traces the literary rococo as it evolves from its origins in the work of Montaigne to the works of fairy-tale writers at the turn of the century."
Anne E. Duggan, Wayne State University, Eighteenth-Century Fiction (2015)
"The book succeeds in its aim to "open up the field of early modern French studies to a greater receptiveness to this compendium-resistant trend in literary creation and publication" (4). Stedman has provided a valuable conceptual toolbox with which to excavate this rich vein of neglected literary innovation."
Ellen R. Welch, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, vol. 68 issue 4 (Dec. 2014)
Critical Editions & Translations
Henriette-Julie de Castelnau, comtesse de Murat: Les Lutins du château de Kernosy
Classiques Garnier, 2024
Les Lutins du château de Kernosy (1710), le dernier roman de la comtesse Henriette-Julie de Murat, est un exemple remarquable du roman de loisir, un genre de fiction qui a connu une grande popularité à la fin du dix-septième siècle, reflétant à la fois un intérêt accru pour la vie privée de l'aristocratie et un questionnement des orthodoxies politiques et religieuses qui anticipe celui des Lumières. Mme de Murat allie humour, satire sociale, et une perspective proto-féministe dans une intrigue bien construite où le surnaturel est démystifié, où les protagonistes qui suivent leur coeur sont récompensés, et où une fin surprise ravit le lecteur d'aujourd'hui autant qu'à l'époque.
The Sprites of Kernosy Castle: by Henriette-Julie de Castelnau, Comtesse de Murat
Classiques Garnier, 2024
This novel reflects a shift in French values at the turn of the eighteenth century, which saw increased interest in the private lives of the aristocracy and the pre-Enlightenment questioning of political and religious orthodoxies. Novels of fiction and leisure gained popularity, and it was during this time that Henriette-Julie de Castelnau, the Countess de Murat, published her second leisure novel, The Sprites of Kernosy Castle. Combining humor, social satire, and a proto-feminist outlook, Murat crafts a well-constructed plot where the supernatural is debunked. Murat’s career was cut short when a series of “misdemeanors” related to the countess’s homosexual tendencies led to her arrest in 1702. Sprites, which was released during a partial reprieve from prison, is the final published work of this independent-minded early feminist author.
Henriette-Julie de Castelnau comtesse de Murat. Voyage de campagne
Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2014
Publié en 1699, le roman hybride de la comtesse de Murat présente la vision d'un monde alternatif formé par un groupe de jeunes aristocrates cultivés et désenchantés de l'absolutisme prôné par Louis XIV : on y recherche la liberté de se divertir, la formation d'une société sans règles officielles et l'entretien de rapports soit d'amitié soit d'amour. Sur le plan formel, le roman suit un cadre minimal ponctué par une grande variété de textes intercalés : contes de fées, contes de revenants (vrais, faux ou douteux), histoires d'amour et saynètes comiques.
Henriette-Julie de Castelnau, comtesse de Murat: Les Lutins du château de Kernosy
Classiques Garnier, 2024
Popular with the worldly aristocracy, late seventeenth-century experimental novels like the Countess de Murat’s Voyage de campagne (A Trip to the Country) were published in small format, widely circulated, and reprinted more frequently than any other type of fiction both in France and abroad. Murat’s hybrid work, built around a humorous frame narrative, details a trip to a pristine country estate taken by seven Parisian aristocrats and contains interpolated examples of the period’s most popular literary forms—including seven ghost stories, seven autobiographical anecdotes, one literary fairy tale, one rondeau, two gallant poems, two love letters, and eleven proverb comedies.