Female sexuality and cultural degradation in enlightenment France : medicine and literature / Mary McAlpin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McAlpin, Mary, 1960-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

French literature--18th century--History and criticism.

French literature.

Women in literature.

Sex in literature.

Literature and medicine--France--History--18th century.

Literature and medicine.

History.

France.

Physical Description:

xii, 195 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Farnham, Surrey ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, [2012]

Summary:

In this rejoinder to Enlightenment-era embrace of the idea of mankind's innate perfectability, McAlpin (French, U. of Tennessee) argues a cogent case for a counter-narrative that feared the collapse of European civilization due to its citizen's moral or physical degradation. She examines the belief that the main cause of this impending collapse was the premature awakening of female sexual desire, through medical and literary sources treating females as "cultural thermometers." The new genre of the adolescent hygiene treatise, that emerged in the 1760s, represented a new secular approach to sexuality. With young girls considered especially vulnerable to the influence of novels, the author examines their ambiguous sexual/virtuous role in the writings of Rousseau, Marie-Jeanne Roland, de Sade, and others. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Contents:

Daughters of Eve

Puberty and the splitting of the single sex

Women as bellwethers of cultural degradation

Julie d'Etange, or sexuality and the virtuous heroine

The Marquise de Merteuil, or sexuality in the state of nature

Marie-Jeanne Roland, or sexuality and the republic of virtue

Sade's way.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781409422419

1409422410

9781409422426

1409422429

OCLC:

773909311