Visualizing the Nation : Gender, Representation, and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France / Joan B. Landes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Landes, Joan B., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human body--Symbolic aspects--France--History--18th century.

Human body.

Allegories.

Sex role in art.

Nationalism and art--France.

Nationalism and art.

Art--Political aspects--France.

Art.

Art, French--18th century.

Art, French.

France--History--Revolution, 1789-1799--Art and the revolution.

France.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 254 p. :) ill. ;

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Popular images of women were everywhere in revolutionary France. Although women's political participation was curtailed, female allegories of liberty, justice, and the republic played a crucial role in the passage from old regime to modern society. In her lavishly illustrated and gracefully written book, Joan B. Landes explores this paradox within the workings of revolutionary visual culture and traces the interaction between pictorial and textual political arguments. Landes highlights the widespread circulation of images of the female body, notwithstanding the political leadership's suspicions of the dangers of feminine influence and the seductions of visual imagery. The use of caricatures and allegories contributed to the destruction of the masculinized images of hierarchic absolutism and to forging new roles for men and women in both the intimate and public arenas. Landes tells the fascinating story of how the depiction of the nation as a desirable female body worked to eroticize patriotism and to bind male subjects to the nation-state. Despite their political subordination, women too were invited to identify with the project of nationalism. Recent views of the French Revolution have emphasized linguistic concerns; in contrast, Landes stresses the role of visual cognition in fashioning ideas of nationalism and citizenship. Her book demonstrates as well that the image is often a site of contestation, as individual viewers may respond to it in unexpected, even subversive, ways.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Image as Argument in Revolutionary Political Culture

2. Representing the Body Politic

3. Embodiments of Female Virtue

4. Possessing La Patrie: Nationalism and Sexuality Revolutionary Culture

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. 233-250) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Mrz 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781501727535

1501727532

OCLC:

1080550802