This panel seeks to explore libertine writings from the early modern period to the contemporary era, through a variety of texts, places and disciplines. The concept of libertinage itself is already a complex and contested notion in early modern scholarship. In the French context, the word was originally popularized by several religious figures in the 16^th and 17^th centuries as an attack against various forms of heterodox practices. Neither a true philosophical movement, nor an easily identifiable doctrine, libertinage remains a more or less “operational concept”[1] that served to forge a literary and philosophical category encompassing a multiplicity of texts and authors thought to represent such subversive behaviors and philosophies. A classical division was delineated by René Pintard between what is understood as “libertinage érudit”, a form of intellectual freedom which would have paved the way for the French Enlightenment philosophers, and “libertinage des mœurs”, or a form of sexual freedom, understood mostly in the sense of sexual debauchery[2]. This classical division of libertine works between erotic literature and philosophical texts tend to exclude women authors, our understanding of libertinage still being governed today by a male-centered view that crucially fails to include existing female perspectives.

As female writers found unique and diverted ways to express their experiences and conceptualizations of the world, libertine topoi are reworked, rewritten, recontextualized, and inscribed in particular narrative practices. This lead us to rethink our intellectual and moral categories, past and present, to redefine what we understand as libertinage, but also as philosophy, as well as the way we think about the writing of sexuality, fields largely defined in masculine terms, and therefore denying the particularities of women’s social constraints, means of expression and subjectivity. Libertinage (understood here mostly in its modern, sexual sense), as many feminist theorists argue, has indeed essentially benefited men. In an interview where she explores the incompatibility between feminism and libertinage, Nancy K. Miller argues that the latter cannot be understood as an emancipating tool for women: only men would take advantage of this so-called “sexual freedom”, and even when the subject/object power relationship is reversed, women do not escape the “rule of consequence” [3]. Entering the libertine game would therefore be playing the patriarchy game. This conceptualization of libertinage, defined in masculine terms, which also tends to ignore the common usage of the word at the time, leads feminist theorists themselves to deny the possibility of “libertine female writing” in this period: Nancy K. Miller further states: “Today there are women writers, whether they consider themselves feminists or not, in a position to rewrite male fantasies, but historically women writers haven’t. It’s not in the record”[4]. This panel will seek to move beyond the French context to include works by Italian and English women writers and broaden our understanding of female libertinage. Are libertinage and feminism compatible?

The paper of Manali Allen will give a general overview of the theory of libertinage as it appears in the French context and some of the main problematics that arise in libertine female writings in the Early Modern area (1651-1715). Bernadette Kelly will explore Aphra Behn’s The Rover (1677) an Early Modern English libertine novel, which will allow her to explore definitions of libertine freedom that go beyond sexuality and women’s availability to men’s desires. Finally Barbara Halla will explore the question of female libertinage in the contemporary and Italian context through Melissa Panarello’s erotic autobiography, 100 colpi di spazzola prima di andare a dormire (2003), exploring contrasted interpretations of this text as a story of exploitation or sexual liberation. Can women’s writing resolve the tension between self-abjection and emancipation? This panel will be composed of three presentations of 18 minutes each, leaving 20 minutes for discussions and exchanges on the topic.

[1] As Jean-Charles Darmon suggests with humor, « one cannot deny the existence of libertinage like one can deny the existence of unicorns and pink elephants ». My translation, from « Libertinage et Politique : remarques sur l’utilité et les incertitudes d’un questionnement » in Littératures classiques, 2004/3, n°55, (10).

[2] René Pintard, Le Libertinage érudit dans la première moitié du XVII^e siècle, Paris, Slatkine, 2000.

[3] Nancy K. Miller, « Libertinage and Feminism » in Yale French Studies, No. 94, Libertinage and Modernity, 1998, (18).

[4] Nancy K. Miller, op. cit. (18).