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Nineteenth-century French Literature witnessed a dramatic increase
in literary representations of same-sex eroticism. Though the first half of
the century is relatively poor in such depictions, the birth of several
artistic and literary movements, such as
aestheticism,
decadence,
and symbolism,
made gay and lesbian sexuality a significant subject in the national
literature after 1850. |
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George Sand |
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 Honoré
de Balzac (1799-1850) was trained in the law, but he turned his back on
a conventional career to write fiction. He became one of the masters of
French nineteenth-century fiction and provocatively includes both lesbian
and gay male characters in his novels. |
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Charles Baudelaire
(1821-1867) was both a poet who continues to intrigue and influence
writers and also an important art and literary critic. He was among
the first French poets to include lesbians as subjects. |
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Michel Foucault
(1926-1984), a leading twentieth-century philosopher,
famously theorized that modern conceptions of homosexuality originated during the
second half of the nineteenth century. |
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French-speaking Theater has a long history of depicting male
and female homosexuals and in exploring the complexities of homosexual
life. |
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Joris-Karl Huysmans
(1848-1907) was an important figure in the
Aesthetic and
Decadent movements who exemplified a style of homosexuality at a
pivotal moment in the emergence of gay identity. |
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Count Robert de
Montesquiou-Fezensac (1855-1921) was a writer during
France's Belle Epoque, but he is best remembered as a dandy and an
aesthete who inspired the literary creations of others. |
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Marcel Proust
(1871-1922) wrote A la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance
of Things Past), one of the major achievements of Modernism and a
great gay novel. One of the greatest characters in the novel is the
Baron de Charlus, based on Count Robert de Montesquiou. |
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Marc André
Raffalovich (1864-1934) was born in Russia, raised in France, and
published his most important work in England, though the book that
established his reputation as an expert on homosexuality, Uranisme
et Unisexualité (Uranianism and Unisexuality), was
published in French. |
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Arthur Rimbaud
(1854-1891), the French "boy-poet," who stressed liberation in his
writing and whose art is based solely on his individual creativity, is
a progenitor of modern gay poetics. He wrote most of his mature poetry during a
tumultuous love
affair with
Paul Verlaine. |
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George Sand
(1804-1876) is as infamous for her cigar-in-hand cross-dressing as she
is famous for her eighty novels, twenty plays, and numerous political
tracts. |
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 Paul
Verlaine (1844-1896) is a poet who celebrates both heterosexual and
homosexual activity, including lesbian relationships. |
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