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Queer Lives
Eight gay men wrote their autobiographies in French between 1845 and 1905: some of them reflected on their childhood, adolescence, and adulthood; others provided brief impressions of their loves and desires. A few of them dramatized their lives following contemporary theatrical and fictional models, while others wrote for medical doctors, who used the men's writings as case studies to illustrate their theories on sexual deviance. In some instances the doctors' extensive interpretations cannot be separated from the men's own stories, but in others the authors speak for themselves.

The remarkable autobiographies in Queer Lives, translated into English for the first time here, give present-day readers a rare glimpse into otherwise shrouded existences. They relate the experiences of a man about town, a cross-dressing entertainer, a troubled adolescent, and two fetishists, among others. The autobiographies will interest a wide audience today at a time when readers are seeking new views on the lives of ordinary men and women from the past, when gay people are looking for the roots of their communities, and when scholars are trying to understand the formation of sexual identities at a crucial moment in the history of modern Europe.

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Queer Lives
Eight gay men wrote their autobiographies in French between 1845 and 1905: some of them reflected on their childhood, adolescence, and adulthood; others provided brief impressions of their loves and desires. A few of them dramatized their lives following contemporary theatrical and fictional models, while others wrote for medical doctors, who used the men's writings as case studies to illustrate their theories on sexual deviance. In some instances the doctors' extensive interpretations cannot be separated from the men's own stories, but in others the authors speak for themselves.

The remarkable autobiographies in Queer Lives, translated into English for the first time here, give present-day readers a rare glimpse into otherwise shrouded existences. They relate the experiences of a man about town, a cross-dressing entertainer, a troubled adolescent, and two fetishists, among others. The autobiographies will interest a wide audience today at a time when readers are seeking new views on the lives of ordinary men and women from the past, when gay people are looking for the roots of their communities, and when scholars are trying to understand the formation of sexual identities at a crucial moment in the history of modern Europe.

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Queer Lives

Queer Lives

by William A Peniston, Nancy Erber
Queer Lives
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Queer Lives

Queer Lives

by William A Peniston, Nancy Erber

Overview

Eight gay men wrote their autobiographies in French between 1845 and 1905: some of them reflected on their childhood, adolescence, and adulthood; others provided brief impressions of their loves and desires. A few of them dramatized their lives following contemporary theatrical and fictional models, while others wrote for medical doctors, who used the men's writings as case studies to illustrate their theories on sexual deviance. In some instances the doctors' extensive interpretations cannot be separated from the men's own stories, but in others the authors speak for themselves.

The remarkable autobiographies in Queer Lives, translated into English for the first time here, give present-day readers a rare glimpse into otherwise shrouded existences. They relate the experiences of a man about town, a cross-dressing entertainer, a troubled adolescent, and two fetishists, among others. The autobiographies will interest a wide audience today at a time when readers are seeking new views on the lives of ordinary men and women from the past, when gay people are looking for the roots of their communities, and when scholars are trying to understand the formation of sexual identities at a crucial moment in the history of modern Europe.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780803215733
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Publication date: 01/01/2008
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
File size: 1 MB

About the Author

William A. Peniston is the manager of the Newark Museum’s library and archives. He is the author of Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris. Nancy Erber is a professor of linguistics and modern languages at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York. She is the coeditor of Disorder in the Court: Trials and Sexual Conflict at the Turn of the Century.

Table of Contents


List of Illustrations     viii
Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction     xi
The Dramatization of the Self     1
"Secret Confessions of a Parisian" by Arthur W------, "The Countess" (1874)     7
Autobiographies as Case Studies     73
"Loves" by Anonymous, in Dr. Ambroise Tardieu's A Medical and Legal Study on Assaults against Morality (1867)     83
"Observation 1" by Anonymous, in Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot and Dr. Valentin Magnan's Inversion of the Sexual Instinct (1881)     87
"Autobiographical Notes" by Gustave L------, in Dr. Paul Garnier's Madness in Paris (1890)     95
"Autobiographical Notes" by Louis X------, in Dr. Paul Garnier's The Fetishists (1895)     101
"Letter to My Parents" and "My Autobiography" by Antonio, in Dr. Andre Antheaume and Dr. Leon Parrot's A Case of Sexual Inversion (1905)     115
"Mental Hermaphrodite and Other Autobiographical Writings" by Charles Double (1905)     129
Literature, Medicine, and Self-Expression     165
"The Novel of an Invert" by Anonymous (1889, 1896)     173
Source Acknowledgments     249
Notes     251
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Related Subjects

Social Sciences
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LGBT Studies
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