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Thesis ID: CBB001562365

The Criminal Type: The Articulation of Criminality and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century France (2001)

Duke University
Thomas, Jean-Jaques
Bell, David F.

Publication Date: 2001
Edition Details: Advisors: Thomas, Jean-Jaques; Bell, David F.
Physical Details: 406 pp.
Language: English

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Science and literature Criminology Science and gender Homosexuality 19th century France Zola, Emile Proust, Marcel Balzac, Honoré de

Early nineteenth-century depictions of delinquency tended to present the criminal as a product of his environment, and so can be read as a critique of the society as a whole. Later views, however, reflected a more biologically deterministic view of human behavior and tended to blame society's problems on individual "degenerates." Similarly, homosexuality at first was thought to be a symptom of unnatural economic and social institutions like poverty and the prison system; but by the end of the century, legal medicine and criminology argued that sexual deviance was the underlying cause of all forms of anomie. Over the course of the century, the relationship between criminality and homosexuality became increasingly ambiguous and eventually chiasmatic: each being both cause and effect of the other. Specific changes in the way the sexuality- criminality connection was configured can serve as a barometer of social fears and anxieties particular to specific historical moments. I examine the discursive intersections that exist between literary characterization in key texts by Balzac, Zola, and Proust and the rhetoric of social analysis in contemporaneous scientific theory. The phenomenon of criminality has had an unparalleled ability to inspire work in multiple discursive fields, making an interdisciplinary approach essential. Neither literature, nor "science" should be regarded as the primary origin of our understanding of individual and social dissidence, rather there exists a complicated dialogue between the two. In fiction, the characterization of criminals as sexually deviant or of sexual deviants as criminal shows strong historical sensitivity. The central axis of my argument consists in demonstrating the dramatic difference between earlier conceptions of pederasty as active, dynamic, and animal; and later conceptions of inversion as inactive, weak, and vegetal. During both periods, the public visibility of non-normative sexualities signified the threat of criminality, social disorder, and anomie. In the former period, writers foreground the dangers and pitfalls of the emergent post-Revolutionary social order, while in the latter period, they theorize the gradual deterioration of that order. The ultimate signification of a given character's sexuality is thus heavily dependent on the nature of the causal arrangement.

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Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 62 (2002): 3414. UMI order no. 3030960.

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