Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France / Edition 1

by Robert A. Nye

Overview

In this study of upper-class masculinity from the end of the ancien régime in 1789 to the end of World War I, Robert Nye argues that manhood, masculinity, and male sexuality is, like femininity, a cultural construct, comprising a strict set of heroic ideals and codes of honor which few men have been able to realize in practice. In doing so, Nye destabilizes and historicizes the male body, and incorporates gender into the brand of cultural history inaugurated by Norbert Elias in the 1930s.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520215108
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	11/30/1998
Series:	Studies in the History of Sexuality
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Robert A. Nye is Horning Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History at Oregon State University. He is the author of Crime, Madness, and Politics in Modern France (1984).

Table of Contents

1 Introduction: Sex, Society, and Identity
2 Honor and Male Identity in the Old Regime
3 The Roots of Bourgeois Honorability
4 Sex Difference and the "Separate Spheres" 
5 Population, Degeneration, and Reproduction
6 Male Sexual Identity and the "Perversions" in the Fin de Siecle
7 Bourgeois Sociability and the Point d'Honneur:1800-1860
8 The Culture of the Sword: Manliness and Fencing in the Third Republic
9 Honor and the Duel in the Third Republic, 1860-1914
Dueling and the Law
How Many Duels? 
The Journalistic Duel
The Political Duel
The "Serious" Duel
The "Futile" Duel
10 Conclusion: Courage
Notes
Bibliography of Selected Secondary Works
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Robert Nye...has taken up the daunting challenges of writing about masculinity through a courageously eclectic approach. Few theoretical stones remain unturned...[T]he chronological sweep is no less impressive, from the Old Regime to about 1920....[F]requently fascinating."—Journal of Modern History

"Robert Nye has written a provocative book. Indeed, if you are interested in understanding the cultural construction of masculinity, this is a book that could change your life."—Journal of the History of Medicine

"The material Nye presents is fascinating, and often amusing...Argued with impressive scholarship, exhaustive mastery of the secondary literature, painstaking examination of method and theory, and careful archival selection."—Times Literary Supplement

"Nye's book...constitutes a significant contribution to the study of masculinity in the 19th century. It reminds us how complex the study of sexuality and masculinity can be, as they remain inextricably tied to virtually every area of human experience."—Committee on Lesbian and Gay History Newsletter

"Nye's work is a fascinating study based on solid archival research and a thorough grasp of the literature...This provocative and often amusing book is a valuable addition to the growing field of male gender history."—Journal of Social History

"His is the first account to apply a consistently gendered analysis to duelling in recent French history...Nye has provided us with two invaluable studies about medical discourse and about duelling."—French History

"Thoughtfully written, with enough nods to social and psychoanalytic theories to illuminate rather than encumber his subjects, this book is required reading for all historians of nineteenth-century France."—ISIS

"(Nye) demonstrates better than anyone else has why and how nineteenth-century masculinity was problematized and, in revealing the social and cultural preoccupations which went into the construction of perverts, makes a major contribution to the history of sexuality."—Canadian Journal of History

From the Publisher