The misfit of the family : Balzac and the social forms of sexuality / Michael Lucey.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lucey, Michael, 1960-

Series:

Series Q

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850--Political and social views.

Balzac, Honoré de.

Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850.

Literature and society--France--History--19th century.

Literature and society.

Political and social views.

France.

History.

Sex in literature.

Physical Description:

xxx, 308 pages ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2003.

Summary:

In more than ninety novels and novellas, Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) created a universe teeming with over two thousand characters. The Misfit of the Family reveals how Balzac, in imagining the dense, vividly rendered social world of his novels, used his writing as a powerful means to understand and analyze -- as well as represent -- a range of forms of sexuality. Michael Lucey contends that in order to grasp the full complexity with which sexuality was understood by Balzac, it is necessary to appreciate how he conceived of its relation to family, history, economics, law, and all the many structures within which sexualities take form. Inspired by the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, The Misfit of the Family is a compelling argument that Balzac must be taken seriously as a major inventor and purveyor of new tools for analyzing connections between the sexual and the social.

Contents:

Introduction: Balzac and Alternative Families 1

Chapter 1 Legal Melancholy: Balzac's Eugenie Grandet and the Napoleonic Code 31

Chapter 2 On Not Getting Married in a Balzac Novel 65

Interlude: Balzac and Same-Sex Relations in the 1830s 82

Chapter 3 Balzac's Queer Cousins and Their Friends 124

Chapter 4 The Shadow Economy of Queer Social Capital: Lucien de Rubempre and Vautrin 171

Epilogue: Vautrin's Progeny 225.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (page 289]-301) and index.

ISBN:

082233156X

0822331934

OCLC:

51544192