Between Genders Narrating Difference in Early French Modernism

by Wing, Nathaniel

• ISBN13: 9780874138450
• ISBN10: 0874138450
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-02-01
• Publisher: University of Delaware Press

Summary

Between Genders studies representations of gender in a group of early and mid-nineteenth-century French texts. The five texts examined are diverse in both literary form and theme: two novels, Honore de Balzac's La Fille aux yeux d'or, Theophile Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin, a novella by Charles Baudelarie, "La Fanfarlo," Claire de Duras's pseudo-confession narrative, Ourika, and an autobiography of an intersexual, currently known under the title Herculine Barbin. These texts all share a preoccupation with experiences of gender and with vicissitudes of gender identities. Between Genders demonstrates how gender differentiation becomes a defining issue in early French Modernism. It also explores how border crossings among seemingly distinct terms of identification (heterosexuality, homosexualities, androgyny, etc.) put in question the idea of identity and provoke reconsideration of other important issues: esthetic, ethical, and political questions that are the subject of intense scrutiny and contestation throughout the period.

Author Biography

Nathaniel Wing is director of Graduate Studies in French at LSU.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	9	(4)
Introduction	13	(16)
Part I: The Play of Gender
1. "Vous êtes sans doute très surpris, mon cher d'Albert": Improvisation and Gender in Théophile Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin	29	(22)
2. Androgyny, Hysteria, and the Poet in Charles Baudelaire's La Fanfarlo	51	(26)
Part II: Difference and Disbarment	77	(54)
3. Admissions of Difference: Gender and Ethnicity in Ourika	77	(26)
4. How Herculine's/Abel's Story Is Simplified: Bringing Truth to Sexuality in Herculine Barbin	103	(28)
Part III: Urban Body, Erotic Body	131	(35)
5. Urban Body, Erotic Body: Balzac's La Fille aux yeux d'or	131	(35)
Conclusions	166	(5)
Notes	171	(27)
Bibliography	198	(4)
Index	202