French Masculinities

CHRISTOPHER E. FORTH is a Reader in History at the Australian National University. The author of The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood (2004), he is currently completing a book entitled Civilization and its Malcontents: Masculinity and the Body in the Modern West, forthcoming from Palgrave. BERTRAND TAITHE is a Professor of Cultural History at the University of Manchester, UK. The author of Defeated Flesh, (1999), Citizenship and Wars, (2001), and co-author of Benjamin's Arcades, (2006) he is currently working on the history of humanitari

• List of Figures Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: French Manhood in the Modern World; C.E.Forth & B.Taithe Elite Masculinities in Eighteenth-Century France; A.C.Villa Men without Women? Ideal Masculinity and Male Sociability in the French Revolution, 1789-99; S.Quinlan Making Frenchmen into Warriors: Martial Masculinity in Napoleonic France; M.J.Hughes Neighbourhood Boys and Men: the Changing Spaces of Masculine Identity in France, 1848-1871; B.Taithe La Civilisation and its Discontents: Modernity, Manhood and the Body in the Early Third Republic; C.E.Forth Enemies Within: Venerial Disease and the Defence of French Masculinity between the Wars; J.Surkis Colonial Man; R.Aldrich In the Name of the Father: Fe/male Masculinites in Vichy France; M.Pollard Revolt and Recuperation: Masculinities and the Roman Noir in Immediate Post-War France; C.Gorrara High-Heels or Hiking Boots? Masculinity, Effeminacy and Male Homosexuals in Modern France; M.Sibalis Cinematic Stardom, Shifting Masculinties; M.O'Shaughnessy Virilité in Post-War France: Intellectual Masculinity, Jewishness and Sexual Potency; J-P.Boulé Threatening Virility in the French Banlieues, 1989-2005; A.Rauch Afterword; R.Nye Index

'Assembling a distinguished group of European, American, and Australian scholars, French Masculinities applies and advances the latest ideas and approaches to the subject. Forth and Taithe emphasize that the story of French manhood through the ages is especially complicated and distinctive for several reasons, including the nation's ambivalent military heritage and current waning international status. Framing the book brilliantly are a substantial introductory survey of issues and scholarship by the editors and an Afterword by Robert Nye, doyen of the history of masculinity in France. This welcome work will surely become a point de departfor all future scholarly work in the field.' - Mark Micale, University of Illinois 'A welcome addition to the growing corpus of collected articles on the history of masculinity. What this collection does especially well is provide an overview of the history.' - Morag Martin, Medical History 'In Forth and Taithe's edited collection we now have an excellent survey of the changing notions of what - over the course of three centuries - it meant to be a man in France.' - Angus McLaren, European History Quarterly