The Politics of Love: Queer Heterosexuality in Nineteenth-Century French Literature

by Maxime Foerster

Overview

What would love be if heterosexual couples were no longer assigned gender and sexual norms?

Maxime Foerster examines the "heterosexual trouble" between men and women in nineteenth-century French Romantic and Decadent literature. Key works by authors ranging from George Sand to Charles Baudelaire persistently demonstrate that heterosexuality did not work: these authors, and many others, investigated the struggle that men and women alike waged against patriarchal norms. Whereas Romantic fiction dedicated itself to the reinvention of love, Decadence promoted sexual and gender deviance.

In expertly evaluating the discord afflicting fictional heterosexual couples, male and female dandies, and doctors and their female patients, Foerster shows the crucial role that literature played in the fashioning of alternative identities. A concluding look at Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu traces the legacy of heterosexual trouble in the twentieth century.

Hardcover is un-jacketed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781512601701
Publisher:	University of New Hampshire Press
Publication date:	04/18/2018
Series:	Becoming Modern: New Nineteenth-Century Studies
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

MAXIME FOERSTER is an assistant professor of French in the Department of World Languages and Literatures at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: The Trouble with Being Straight in Nineteenth-Century French Literature 1

Part 1 Romanticism and the Reinvention of Love

1 Heterosexual Trouble: Female Authors 43

2 Heterosexual Trouble: Male Authors 87

3 Unnatural Heterosexuality 127

Part 2 Decadence and the Refinement of Perversions

4 The Female Dandy 143

5 A Decadent Couple: The Male Doctor and the Female Patient 167

Conclusion: The Proustian Step 197

Notes 203

References 221

Index 235

What People are Saying About This

Margaret Waller

What is queer about the nineteenth-century French novel? Quite a bit, according to Foerster's revealing new study. The author finds queerness and heterosexual trouble in the 'refinement of perversions' typical of late-century Decadence but also in the various challenges to gender and sexual norms in early Romantic novels. The book gives us new words for what today's readers might find modern about the nineteenth century.

From the Publisher

“What is queer about the nineteenth-century French novel? Quite a bit, according to Foerster’s revealing new study. The author finds queerness and heterosexual trouble in the ‘refinement of perversions’ typical of late-century Decadence but also in the various challenges to gender and sexual norms in early Romantic novels. The book gives us new words for what today’s readers might find modern about the nineteenth century.”—“What is queer about the nineteenth-century French novel? Quite a bit, according to Foerster’s revealing new study. The author finds queerness and heterosexual trouble in the ‘refinement of perversions’ typical of late-century Decadence but also in the various challenges to gender and sexual norms in early Romantic novels. The book gives us new words for what today’s readers might find modern about the nineteenth century.”
“Firmly grounded in the historical context of a politically tumultuous century, this book studies literature as a site of feminist and queer resistance that works against dominant rhetoric by reinventing heterosexual love outside the confines of heteronormativity.”—“Firmly grounded in the historical context of a politically tumultuous century, this book studies literature as a site of feminist and queer resistance that works against dominant rhetoric by reinventing heterosexual love outside the confines of heteronormativity.”
“Foerster demonstrates that a range of French Romantic and Decadent novels anticipated current perspectives on sex, sexuality, and gender by deconstructing masculine domination, questioning sexual difference, and resisting heterosexual normalization. The novels confirm that it is seemingly conventional but often tragically dysfunctional heterosexual couples who embody the ‘queering’ of heterosexuality. This clear, cogent, and original book deserves the widest possible readership.”—“Foerster demonstrates that a range of French Romantic and Decadent novels anticipated current perspectives on sex, sexuality, and gender by deconstructing masculine domination, questioning sexual difference, and resisting heterosexual normalization. The novels confirm that it is seemingly conventional but often tragically dysfunctional heterosexual couples who embody the ‘queering’ of heterosexuality. This clear, cogent, and original book deserves the widest possible readership.”

Editorial Reviews

"The introduction, 'The Trouble with Being Straight in Nineteenth-Century French Literature,' is a tour de force, a thorough survey of gender theorists—French, American, and otherwise—from Freud forward, including Foucault, Rich, Wittig, Butler, Bourdieu, and Beauvoir. . . . Essential."—CHOICE

"What is queer about the nineteenth-century French novel? Quite a bit, according to Foerster's revealing new study. The author finds queerness and heterosexual trouble in the 'refinement of perversions' typical of late-century Decadence but also in the various challenges to gender and sexual norms in early Romantic novels. The book gives us new words for what today's readers might find modern about the nineteenth century."—Margaret Waller, Pomona College

From the Publisher

The introduction, 'The Trouble with Being Straight in Nineteenth-Century French Literature,' is a tour de force, a thorough survey of gender theorists—French, American, and otherwise—from Freud forward, including Foucault, Rich, Wittig, Butler, Bourdieu, and Beauvoir.... Essential.

CHOICE