Chevalier d'Eon and his Worlds

Simon Burrows is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Leeds. Jonathan Conlin is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Southampton. Valerie Mainz is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Fine Art, University of Leeds. She specialises in C18th French art and the French Revolution. Russell Golbourne is Professor of Early modern French literature at the University of Leeds.

• The Chevalier d'Eon: Media Star, News Manipulation, Cultural Politics and the Making of an Eighteenth-Century Celebrity; 'Faire le Wilkes': The Chevalier d'Eon and the Wikites, 1762-1775; Beaumarchais and d'Eon: An Affair to Remember Je suis ne a Tonnerre; A 'monster of metamorphosis': Reassessing the Chevalier/Chevaliere d'Eon's Change of Gender; 'La Vie militaire, politique et privee de Melle d'Eon' (1779), ou comment faire d'un recit de vie une enterprise de manipulation; The Maiden of Tonnerre: Vicissitudes of the Chevalier and Chevaliere d'Eon; Dressing d'Eon; The Chevalier d'Eon and his Several Identities: Representations of d'Eon in English caricatures of the 1770s and 1780s; An Eighteenth-Century French Commonwealthman? Exploring the Context of the Chevalier d'Eon's Translation of Marchamont Nedham's; 'The Excellence of a Free State'; Traditions and Discontinuities: d'Eon and Choisy; The Chevalier d'Eon, Rousseau, and New Ideas for Gender, Sex and the Self in the late Eighteenth Century; Louvet's 'Les Amours du Chevalier de Faublas': Sexual, Political and Textual Imbroglios; Le Mythe des Amazones au XVIIIe siecle at la legende du chevalier d'Eon.

The editors of this book have brought together 15 essays...shedding light on various aspects of the chevalier’s life and on the social, political and cultural contexts he/she moved in... The book offers a captivating and highly readable perspective on eighteenth-century French society, looking at issues which are often neglected or under-researched... What is remarkable is the way in which many of the authors use cultural theories in a way that not only helps to shed light on the history of eighteenth-century France but also contributes to the problematization of some issues of cultural theory. From this angle, the volume represents an important meeting point of different disciplines... d’Eon is intelligently placed in his own cultural and social context so that the book represents an important contribution to the history of the period more generally. Its relevance clearly goes beyond the study of d’Eon.