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INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter free, while others may be from any type o f computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Infonnaticn Company 300 NorthZeeb Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 VIEWING THINGS DIFFERENTLY: SPECULARIZED DESIRE AND THE AVANT-GARDE BODY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Garett R. Heysel, B.A., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1 9 9 7 Dissertation Committee: Approved By Professor Jean-François Foumy, Advisy /__ Professor Judith Mayne ------- Adviser Professor Karlis Racevskis Department of French and Italian UMI Number: 9731635 UMI Microform 9731635 Copyright 1997, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48103 ABSTRACT This dissertation offers an analysis of visual and literary representations of the body in the avant-garde works of French homosexual filmmakers and writers from 1918 to 1939. I consider erotically-charged corporal imagery in various works by Jean Cocteau, René Crevel, Colette, Germaine Dulac and Jean Epstein. A principal focus of this investigation, which constitutes its significance, is the acknowledged but unexplored issue of the homosexuality of the majority of the French avant-garde during this period. Each chapter examines the visual and narrative techniques employed by these artists and authors to figure the sexualized body, while devoting significant attention to the literary, cultural and historical context in which these works were produced. Consequently, my methodology depends on close literary and cinematic readings supported by cultural research gleaned from popular journals, press and fashion magazines of the time. Literature, film and popular ii discourses (including fashion and advertising) of the period are preoccupied with the display of the human body. I examine this preoccupation through what I call “specularized” desire which favors celebrating the disguised, fragmented, staged and overtly sexual body. I argue that images of bodies, created at the intersection of gay and lesbian sexuality and the avant-garde, must be understood as productive forms of resistance to medical and scientific discourses, as well as to heterocratic objectification. Ill For Philippe IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I express my sincere appreciation to Jean-François Fourny who has consistently supported and encouraged me throughout my graduate studies. I am also indebted to Professors Judith Mayne and Karlis Racevskis for their insightful guidance. To Professors Lawrence R. Schehr, Sylvie Romanowski, and Linda Harlow, I am grateful for their advice, direction, and most importantly their friendship. Any playful tone in my writing reflects the influence of the late George Bauer who always shared his unique humor and talent with others. I am also thankful for permission from Stanford University Press to include a version of my chapter on René Crevel in this dissertation, as well as the generosity of the Pierre Astier Memorial Fund for funding my research in France. To my family, a special thanks for always understanding and supporting me. And to Philippe C. Dubois, I dedicate this work, for his patience and his faith in me. VITA July 27, 1966 ......................................... Born - Rochester, New York 1988 ........................................................... B.A., Middlebury College 1992 ........................................................... M.A., Northwestern University PUBLICATION “René Crevel’s Body Algebra.” Articulations of Difference: Gender Studies and Writing in French. Eds. Dominique Fisher and Lawrence R. Schehr. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997 155-66. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: French and Italian Studies in: Twentieth-Century French Literature and Culture ....................................................................... Jean-François Fourny French Cinema ............................................................... Judith Mayne VI TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT............................................................................................... ii DEDICATION............................................................................................ iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.......................................................................... v VITA .......................................................................................................... Vi INTRODUCTION....................................................................................... 1 C h a p te r 1. René Crevel’s Body Algebra ................................................. 2 6 2. Jean Cocteau and His Men .................................................... 5 0 3. Staging Colette: Writing and Performing the Body ............................................................................................... 9 4 4. Germaine Dulac’s Pure Cinema as Specularized Desire ................................................................. 1 3 4 5. Ultra Drama in Jean Epstein’s La Chute de la Maison Usher ............................................................................. 170 CONCLUSION............................................................................................. 196 LIST OF REFERENCES 199 Vll INTRODUCTION In general terms, the subject of this dissertation involves an analysis of homosexual representations of the sexualized body in French literature and film between the wars. The impetus for this project emerges from the realization that even a cursory consideration of French literature and film of the early part of this century attests to the diverse representations of the human body and sexuality. Certainly the invention of photography in 1839 played no small part in the accumulation of images of sexualized bodies in both the visual and the literary arts. The photograph allowed for the possibility of fixing the body, its image and its surroundings, in a relatively permanent state. Naked or semi-naked, the body’s image was more readily available in its rawest and most realistic form. Important examples of the proliferation of images of the body include Eadweard Muybridge’s stop-action photographic studies: Animal Locomotion (1887) and The Human Figure in Motion (1901). Of the over 800 plates contained in Muybridge’s earlier study some 520 of them are of the human figure performing various tasks (sitting, bathing, exercising and so forth) in partial or total states of nudity (Ewing 20). Although seemingly conceived and designed as scientific studies of the human form, the stop-action photographs of Muybridge and others like Thomas Eakins reveal a modest attention to artistic and narrative considerations. In many cases, the stop-action photographs tell a story. Plate 408 of Animal Locomotion depicts a woman approaching and then dousing another woman with a bucket of bath water. These images accurately convey the surprise and frustration felt by the victim. It seems obvious that Muybridge was attempting to capture more than the physical displacement of the human form. He draws our interest to the emotion and the sensation of human movement as well. As painters took notice of the technological advances in photography and freely purchased daguerreotypes of naked models for their work, clandestine demand for erotic photographs soared (Ewing 22). Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase #2 of 1912 may certainly be read in the light of stop-action photography. His morcelized and disarticulated image of the body undeniably echoes the more intact and more scientific rendering of Muybridge’s nudes. Egon Schiele’s Squatting Woman of 1914 (printed in 1919) represents another example of the rapport between representations of the body in photography and in painting. The lines composing the woman’s body in Schiele’s print hint at the previous states and positions of her movement downward, and call to mind Thomas Eakin’s History of a Jump (1884-85). In addition to the role it played in the visual arts, the photographic image served to anchor the body’s accessibility to other forms of analysis, while reflecting rising interests in social sciences such as ethnography.