Homosexuality in French History and Culture

<p>Deconstruct changing representations of homosexuality with this important new work of cultural criticism!</p> <p>Homosexuality in French History and Culture explores episodes patterns and images of same-sex attraction in France from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century from the essays of Michel de Montaigne to pride parades in contemporary Paris. This groundbreaking book documents the ways homosexuality has been named experienced regulated understood and imagined. During these centuries homosexuality has been stigmatized as a sin crime or disease and denounced as a threat to social order and national identity. Yet the rhetoric of condemnation has always co-existed with the reality of toleration. This groundbreaking collection analyzes the ways in which persecutions as well as differences within minority sexual subcultures have highlighted stereotypes and anxieties about class and age differences gendered roles and separatism. Homosexuality in French History and Culture offers historical and literary studies based on a wide variety of sources including:</p><ul> <li> novels plays and poetry </li> <li> gossip and satires </li> <li> police reports </li> <li> medical texts </li> <li> travel literature </li> <li> newspapers and periodicals </li> <li> memoirsHomosexuality in French History and Culture combines fresh creative re-interpretation of familiar texts with exciting new explorations of neglected historical episodes and cultures. It is a landmark of meticulous scholarship and rigorous theoretical analysis and a vital resource for scholars of queer theory French history and culture and literary criticism.</li> </ul>