French Romanticism and the Reinvention of Love by Maxime A
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French Romanticism and the Reinvention of Love By Maxime A. Foerster A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Romance Languages and Literatures: French) In the University of Michigan 2012 Doctoral Committee: Professor Michèle A. Hannoosh, Chair Professor Cristina Moreiras-Menor Associate Professor Jarrod L. Hayes Associate Professor Nadine M. Hubbs Lecturer Esther Newton © Maxime A. Foerster 2012 Dedication Au charchour ii Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to David Halperin, David Caron and Frieda Ekotto for having encouraged me to start my PhD at UM, Ann Arbor. I have been honored and stimulated to work with Michèle Hannoosh who taught me coherence and rigor throughout these years of thinking and writing. I feel privileged to have been able to write my dissertation with those I called my dream team, composed of Professors Michèle Hannoosh, Jarrod Hayes, Cristina Moreiras, Esther Newton and Nadine Hubbs. For their friendship, support and fabulousness, I would like to thank Aaron Boalick, Jennifer Bonnet, Virginie Brinker, Neil Doshi, Matthieu Dupas, Gilles Freissinier, Aston Gonzales, Melanie Hawthorne, Trevor Hoppe, Lauren Kennedy, Gérard Koskovich, Charline Lafage, Larry La Fountain, Nicolas Lamorte, Bertrand Metton, Pedro Monaville, Marie-Pierre Pruvot, Pantxika Passicot, Steve Puig, Marie Stoll, Marcelino Viera, and Yannick Viers. I will never thank my parents enough for their love and understanding. Above all, thank you, H.N. iii Table of Contents Dedication ........................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iii Abstract French Romanticism and the Reinvention of Love .............................................. v Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Heterosexual Trouble ..................................................................................... 22 Chapter 2: The Female Dandy .......................................................................................... 91 Chapter 3: Textual Androgyny and Stylistic Dandyism ................................................. 117 Chapter 4: Heterosexual Trouble in the Spanish Romantic Novel ................................ 146 Chapter 5: Decadence, or the Parody of Sexology ........................................................ 183 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 216 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 221 iv Abstract French Romanticism and the Reinvention of Love By Maxime A. Foerster Chair: Michèle A. Hannoosh The dissertation focuses on French Romanticism as a space of experimentation for imagining alternative social contracts founded on the reinvention of heterosexual gender standards and sex-practices. By depicting the unhappy fate of heterosexual couples– whose love is challenged by sexual and gender norms, and expectations such as monogamous marriage, parenthood, and unequal domesticity,–novels by Germaine de Staël, George Sand, and Théophile Gautier articulate, I argue, a notion of “heterosexual trouble” by triggering a Romantic utopian vision of a non-normative heterosexuality. In chapters devoted to dandyism, I develop this idea by exploring the tensions in the efforts of authors such as Charles Baudelaire and Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly to define dandyism as a male preserve in spite of the advent, in their own texts, of the female dandy and her problematic relationship with her male counterpart. I include an analysis of style in my study, and argue that specific features of these works can be considered the formal inscription of the notion of “heterosexual trouble.” In addition, the dissertation extends v beyond the French literary context to consider Spanish Romanticism. I argue that the theme of “heterosexual trouble” can also be found in the works of Spanish authors such as Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Rosalia de Castro, and Carolina Coronado. In the final chapter, devoted to the reinvention of love in fin-de-siècle Decadent literature, I argue that the theme of “heterosexual trouble” is depicted through a parody of the language and practices of the new science of sexology. The dissertation approaches Romantic love through the perspective of both men and women in their reaction to a normative heterosexuality and shows men to be as tormented and frustrated (if not more so) by the dynamics of masculine domination as women are. vi Introduction “Les romans sont les dialogues socratiques de notre temps.” Friedrich Schlegel Rimbaud famously wrote in Une saison en enfer that “love has to be reinvented.” Although he was critical of Romantic authors,1 I will argue in this dissertation that his call for a reinvention of love had in fact been addressed in French Romantic literature. Richard C. Sha opens his article “Romanticism and the sciences of perversion” by stating that “It is perhaps no real news that the Romantics were fascinated by non-reproductive or perverse forms of sexuality” (43). If Romanticism is indeed perceived as sexually transgressive, with many texts by Byron, Blake, Chateaubriand and Sand evoking incest, homoeroticism, polygamy and intergenerational love, the question of the heterosexual couple remains to be analyzed. In this dissertation, I will explore the Romantic politics of love by focusing on what I will articulate as the concept of heterosexual trouble. I will attempt to demonstrate that French Romantic literature can be seen as a space in which sexual and gender norms are challenged by heterosexual couples seeking to experience their love outside of the institution of marriage. In her Feminist Introduction to Romanticism, Elizabeth Fay underlines the crucial role played by individualism in the Romantic sensibility: Closely related to the question of inspiration is the notion of individualism. The Romantic artist discovered in himself a new conception of the self as not just part of society but standing in relation to society. […] The idea of 1 For instance in the letter to Paul Demeny, also known as Lettre du voyant. See Rimbaud. 1 a responsibility to assess society, particularly during the turmoil leading to the French Revolution, was driven by radical questioning, often also thought of as “transgression,” either of limits or of laws. This is the questioning of traditional institutions such as organized religion (the Anglican Church in particular), marriage (“free love,” the sincere sexual relation outside marriage, was promoted among some), and, ultimately (as in France), the monarchy. (11) The radical questioning that Fay mentions as a consequence of a strong individualism includes the politics of love through a critique of marriage: it is this radical questioning in the field of love that I want to address through the dialectics of masculinity and femininity as it is developed in French Romantic literature. Paradoxically, however, such individualism makes the Romantic subject, regardless of his/her sex, prone to a peculiar dispersion of the self. Blanchot’s definition of the Romantic temperament opens up a space for difference and queerness: Il en résultera […] ce caractère dit romantique qui, du reste, est très attrayant, dans la mesure où il lui manque précisément tout caractère, s’il n’est rien d’autre que l’impossibilité d’être quoi que ce soit de déterminé, de fixe, de sûr – d’où la frivolité, la gaieté, la pétulance, la folie : finalement, la bizarrerie et tout ce que Novalis condamnera, lorsqu’il reprochera lucidement à l’âme romantique de se rendre trop faible par dispersion et d’être efféminée. (525) Romantic behaviour, or the Romantic soul, is queer at least in two respects: first because of its unstable identity and weirdness (“bizarrerie”), which is one of the salient characteristics of Romanticism generally, and second because of its “effeminacy,” which brings out a gender slippage: the choice of the word “effeminate” instead of “feminine” implies a problematic masculinity. The Romantic subject offers itself as a paradox: its essential characteristic is the very impossibility to be characterized as a fixed, knowable entity. The gender confusion evoked by the term “efféminée,” highlights this shunning of concrete gender categories such as masculinity and femininity. I will argue that the 2 dialectics of masculinity and femininity at stake in French Romantic literature is purposefully in contradiction with the concept of sexual difference between men and women. Although Blanchot focuses mainly on German Romanticism, I would like to analyse the categories of gender and sexuality in French Romantic literature in order to argue that difference, as form and subject, is one of its main features as regards to heterosexuality. I will elaborate what is intrinsically queer about Romanticism, as it is realized in both style and content. I believe queerness is at the heart of the Romantic project because Romanticism, in its rejection of Classical norms, in its critical reception of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and in its embrace of artifice, madness and contradiction, articulated a modern crisis in rethinking the politics of love