The 19th-Century Novel and its Others

This course examines constructions of gender, sexuality, race, and class in relation to French culture, as represented in works of fiction across the major literary movements of the nineteenth century (romanticism, realism, naturalism, decadence). We will consider the ways in which the novel reinforced and countered the gender and sexual norms distinctive of the period, preoccupations shared by early European sexologists and criminologists, excerpts from which we will read alongside narrative fictions. Racial othering and class hierarchies were equally ingrained in the ideologies of the period and contributed to shaping the treatment of gender and sexuality in this body of literature. Topics include constructions of sexual deviance, fatal femininity, besieged masculinity, sexual exoticism, matrimonial malaise. Taught in English, with texts in English translation.