Ce mélange d’ordure et de poème. Amore, corpo e sessualità nel linguaggio di Albertine Sarrazin e Grisélidis Réal

This paper aims to examine the linguistic treatment of the themes of love, body and sexuality in the female imprisonment-and-wandering writings. If the twentieth century is characterized by the rise of texts produced by prison-writers, female criminal- writers occupy a particular position. In fact, labelled as rebels and not as a martyrs, the female outlaws face the threat of delegitimization. In such a context, the themes of love, body and sexuality become instruments of resistance against the imperative of silence. In order to examine the presence and the linguistic treatment of the themes in question, we will explore the works of Albertine Sarrazin (1937-1967) and Grisélidis Réal (1929-2005). We will focus, in particular, on two prison diaries – Le Times. Journal de prison 1959 by Sarrazin, and Suis-je encore vivante? by Réal –, and on two novels – L’astragale (Sarrazin) and Le noir est une couleur (Réal).