The Misfit of the Family

Balzac and the Social Forms of Sexuality

Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, French, European, Nonfiction, Health & Well Being, Psychology, Human Sexuality
Cover of the book The Misfit of the Family by Michael Lucey, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, Eve  Kosofsky Sedgwick, Duke University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Michael Lucey, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick ISBN: 9780822385165
Publisher: Duke University Press Publication: August 25, 2003
Imprint: Duke University Press Books Language: English
Author: Michael Lucey, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
ISBN: 9780822385165
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publication: August 25, 2003
Imprint: Duke University Press Books
Language: English

In more than ninety novels and novellas, Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) created a universe teeming with over two thousand characters. The Misfit of the Family reveals how Balzac, in imagining the dense, vividly rendered social world of his novels, used his writing as a powerful means to understand and analyze—as well as represent—a range of forms of sexuality. Moving away from the many psychoanalytic approaches to the novelist's work, Michael Lucey contends that in order to grasp the full complexity with which sexuality was understood by Balzac, it is necessary to appreciate how he conceived of its relation to family, history, economics, law, and all the many structures within which sexualities take form.

The Misfit of the Family is a compelling argument that Balzac must be taken seriously as a major inventor and purveyor of new tools for analyzing connections between the sexual and the social. Lucey’s account of the novelist’s deployment of "sexual misfits" to impel a wide range of his most canonical works—Cousin Pons, Cousin Bette, Eugenie Grandet, Lost Illusions, The Girl with the Golden Eyes—demonstrates how even the flexible umbrella term "queer" barely covers the enormous diversity of erotic and social behaviors of his characters. Lucey draws on the thinking of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu and engages the work of critics of nineteenth-century French fiction, including Naomi Schor, D. A. Miller, Franco Moretti, and others. His reflections on Proust as Balzac’s most cannily attentive reader suggest how the lines of social and erotic force he locates in Balzac’s work continued to manifest themselves in twentieth-century writing and society.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

In more than ninety novels and novellas, Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) created a universe teeming with over two thousand characters. The Misfit of the Family reveals how Balzac, in imagining the dense, vividly rendered social world of his novels, used his writing as a powerful means to understand and analyze—as well as represent—a range of forms of sexuality. Moving away from the many psychoanalytic approaches to the novelist's work, Michael Lucey contends that in order to grasp the full complexity with which sexuality was understood by Balzac, it is necessary to appreciate how he conceived of its relation to family, history, economics, law, and all the many structures within which sexualities take form.

The Misfit of the Family is a compelling argument that Balzac must be taken seriously as a major inventor and purveyor of new tools for analyzing connections between the sexual and the social. Lucey’s account of the novelist’s deployment of "sexual misfits" to impel a wide range of his most canonical works—Cousin Pons, Cousin Bette, Eugenie Grandet, Lost Illusions, The Girl with the Golden Eyes—demonstrates how even the flexible umbrella term "queer" barely covers the enormous diversity of erotic and social behaviors of his characters. Lucey draws on the thinking of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu and engages the work of critics of nineteenth-century French fiction, including Naomi Schor, D. A. Miller, Franco Moretti, and others. His reflections on Proust as Balzac’s most cannily attentive reader suggest how the lines of social and erotic force he locates in Balzac’s work continued to manifest themselves in twentieth-century writing and society.

More books from Duke University Press

Cover of the book M/E/A/N/I/N/G by Michael Lucey, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, Eve  Kosofsky Sedgwick
Cover of the book Hard Times in the Marvelous City by Michael Lucey, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, Eve  Kosofsky Sedgwick
Cover of the book Essential Essays, Volume 1 by Michael Lucey, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, Eve  Kosofsky Sedgwick
Cover of the book Japan in the World by Michael Lucey, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, Eve  Kosofsky Sedgwick
Cover of the book Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil by Michael Lucey, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, Eve  Kosofsky Sedgwick
Cover of the book Imagining Transgender by Michael Lucey, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, Eve  Kosofsky Sedgwick
Cover of the book Writing in Dante's Cult of Truth by Michael Lucey, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, Eve  Kosofsky Sedgwick
Cover of the book The Politics of Liberal Education by Michael Lucey, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, Eve  Kosofsky Sedgwick
Cover of the book Surfer Girls in the New World Order by Michael Lucey, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, Eve  Kosofsky Sedgwick
Cover of the book Paper Tangos by Michael Lucey, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, Eve  Kosofsky Sedgwick
Cover of the book Portrait of a Young Painter by Michael Lucey, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, Eve  Kosofsky Sedgwick
Cover of the book Rock and Roll Always Forgets by Michael Lucey, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, Eve  Kosofsky Sedgwick
Cover of the book A Small Boy and Others by Michael Lucey, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, Eve  Kosofsky Sedgwick
Cover of the book Poetics of the Flesh by Michael Lucey, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, Eve  Kosofsky Sedgwick
Cover of the book Cuba Represent! by Michael Lucey, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, Eve  Kosofsky Sedgwick
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy