Perry Gethner

editor of "Voyage de campagne"

November 4, 2015

Perry Gethner is Regents Professor, Norris Professor of French, and head of the department of foreign languages & literatures. He has published numerous critical editions and translations of early modern French texts, mostly plays, plus more than 60 articles. Much of Gethner's work is devoted to French women playwrights, as well as various aspects of early modern French drama and opera.

The Countess de Murat's experimental novel, first published in 1699, glorifies aristocratic resistance to the absolutist regime of Louis XIV. A group of young and cultivated nobles, men and women, form a private society of their own, where the main pursuits are conversation, story telling and short excursions. The stories they tell one another involve autobiographical accounts of their love lives, plus ghost stories and a fairy tale. They also improvise short satirical plays revolving around popular proverbs. Murat was herself an unconventional writer with a scandalous private life; she urged more freedom for women to live and write as they chose, regardless of society's disapproval.

URL: https://library.okstate.edu/news/celebratingbooks/2015/perry-gethner

Last Updated: 19 January 2021