The more we learn, the more there is to know - Book Review

Journal of Sex Research, Nov, 2002 by Vern L. Bullough

Homosexuality in French History and Culture. Edited by Jeffrey Merrick and Michael Sibalis. New York: Haworth Press, 2001, 293 pages. Cloth, $59.95; paper, $24.95.

In recent years, the history of human sexuality has become a major growth industry. Ignored for much of the twentieth century by most professional historians or specialists in cultural studies, the study of sexuality has been fueled in large part by groups or individuals who were long slighted by standard histories. Two of these groups, feminists and gays and lesbians, have been dominant and have challenged long-ingrained misanthropic and sexist attitudes. Frequently, however, in their zeal to overcome past prejudices, they have offered one-sided analyses of their own. At first, extreme voices were probably a necessity to rouse public attention, but increasingly the shrillness of the pioneers has been reinterpreted and the modification of their views incorporated into the historical mainstream. Still, much needs to be done. This collection of articles by nine historians, six literary scholars, and two journalists not only throws light on homosexuality and lesbianism, but on sexuality in general, and emphasizes just how the interpretation of history is changed.

Although Michel Foucault is occasionally mentioned, he is mainly ignored. Instead, for the most part, the authors are interested in finding new information about homosexuality and lesbianism and how it fit into French culture. There turns out to be a wealth of documentation available to anyone interested in searching it out. The contributors to this collection have used a variety of sources in a number of different ways. Some have analyzed previously unknown or canonical literary texts and found meanings that eluded or offended previous scholars. Others have studied newspapers, guidebooks, memoirs, autobiographies, medical literature, police reports, judicial records, and artistic and journalistic images to gain new insights. The articles emphasize, however, that there is still much work to be done. More is known about Paris than other cities or the countryside, more known about the educated elite than the ordinary folk, and more known about men than women. These same problems confront historians of any period or time. Still, the more we know, the more we want to know, and as these articles reveal, there are still large untapped sources out there.

The essays are arranged more or less periodically, beginning with an examination of the celebrated friendship of Michel de Montaigne and his close friend Etienne de La Boetie in the sixteenth century, then progressing into the 17th century to an examination of female friendships in Madeleine de Scudery's Histoire de Sappho. This is followed by a series of essays, some general such as "Masculinity and Satires of `Sodomites' in France, 1660-1715," and others based on biographies of individuals including Madame de Murat and Jacques-Francois Pascal. Five concentrate on the 19th century, one on homosexuality in the French Colonies, and four on the 20th century. The latter were particularly valuable to me.

In a short review such as this, I can single out Oliver Jablonski's discussion of the birth of homosexual press in France to indicate the similarities, and to some extent the differences, between France and the United States. Interestingly, both countries in the post-war period almost mirror each other. Arcadie, founded by Andre Baudry, promoted the goal of getting every homosexual to resolve to present a perfect and irreproachable image of homosexuality to the public. It was similar in many ways to ONE, although the latter was not quite so confining. Both journals offered information on homosexuality as well as poetry, short stories, reviews of films and plays, and even some advertisement. Both were opposed to separatism, seeing the necessity of getting along in a heterosexually dominant world. To attract the more adventurous readers, Arcadie included an insert containing mildly erotic photographs and personal advertisements by men seeking to meet other men.

The "conservative" view promoted in Arcadie was regularly challenged by more radical journals, most of which were short lived. This was also true of ONE. In France, it was only in the 1970s that much more radical views achieved prominence and views changed in ways very similar to post-Stonewall United States. Also, as in the United States, the 1950s pioneers were more-or-less ignored by a later generation who felt that the period was not radical enough. It has only been in the past few years that more attention has been paid to these pioneers who are now seen more in their historical contexts than the new generation at first was willing to concede. Similar differences and comparisons can be made with the other articles dealing with the late 20th-century developments in France, including a discussion of the construction of a political and media presence, Gay Misogynr, and the role of effeminate gays in the homophile society.