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Special Features Index  

 
Spotlight French Literature: Nineteenth Century
 
  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.  
 
 

George Sand
George Sand

 
 
  Honoré de BalzacHonoré 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.  
 
 
  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.  
 
 
  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.  
 
 
  French-speaking Theater has a long history of depicting male and female homosexuals and in exploring the complexities of homosexual life.  
 
 
  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.  
 
 
  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.  
 
 
  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.  
 
 
  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.  
 
 
  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  
 
 
  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.  
 
 
  Paul VerlainePaul Verlaine (1844-1896) is a poet who celebrates both heterosexual and homosexual activity, including lesbian relationships.  
 
 

 
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