The Tongue Snatchers - (European Women Writers) by Claudine Herrmann (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Claudine Herrmann became famous in France with he publication of Les Voleuses de langue in 1976. Her much-quoted book is now recognized as a modern classic of feminist literary criticism. Nancy Kline's welcome English translation captures the clarity and passion of observations that go beyond books to boudoirs and boardrooms.

Herrmann charges that language is the fundamental means by which women are oppressed. Their education forces them to parrot masculine discourse, often gets them dismissed as chatterboxes, and silences their real lives. Women who desire to express themselves creatively are obliged to "steal" language or to invent one of their own. Based on readings of major texts in literature, philosophy, and the social sciences, The Tongue Snatchers illuminates how men and women differ in their experiences of words, work, space, time, love, and sexuality.

Review Quotes

"Don't miss or mistake the pun in the title of this book on women and language; Herrmann means to draw our attention to the way women must twist new meanings out of male language. More readily accessible-especially in this excellent translation-than the works of many new French feminists, Herrmann's study shares with them a concern for the ways in which feminine experience is distorted and devalued by a 'colonized body of knowledge and an adulterated language.'"-"Booklist"

About the Author

Nancy Kline is Director of the Writing Project, Barnard College. She is the author of a novel, The Faithful (1969), and of Lightning: The Poetry of René Char (1981).