The Chevalier d'Eon and His Worlds : Gender, Espionage and Politics in the Eighteenth Century.
- 1st ed.
- 1 online resource (340 pages)
Cover Page -- Title Page -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Career and Politics 1762-1785 -- 1 The Chevalier d'Eon, Media Manipulation and the Making of an Eighteenth-Century Celebrity -- Simon Burrows -- 2 On the Art of Diplomacy and the Art of Describing Diplomacy: The Chevalier d'Eon and British Political Life at the End of the Seven Years' War -- Edmond Dziembowski -- 3 'Faire le Wilkes': the Chevalier d'Eon and the Wilkites, 1762-1775 -- Jonathan Conlin -- 4 Beaumarchais and d'Eon: What an Affair -- Donald C. Spinelli -- 5 D'Eon and Tonnerre, 1779-1784 -- Elisabeth Chaussin -- Gender and Representation -- 6 A 'monster of metamorphosis': Reassessing the Chevalier/Chevalière d'Eon's Change of Gender -- Stephen Brogan -- 7 Dressing d'Eon -- Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell -- 8 The Chevalier d'Eon and his Several Identities -- Valerie Mainz -- 9 La Vie militaire, politique et privée de Melle d'Eon (1779): Biography and the Art of Manipulation -- Anne-Marie Mercier-Faivre -- 10 Identity, Gender, Genre and Truth in Th e Maiden of Tonnerre:The Vicissitudes of the Chevalier and Chevalière d'Eon -- Marilyn Morris -- Heroes and Heroines -- 11 The Myth of the Amazons in the Eighteenth Century and theLegend of the Chevalier d'Eon -- Alexandre Stroev -- 12 Transvestite Traditions and Narrative Discontinuities: d'Eonand the abbé de Choisy -- Joseph Harris -- 13 The Chevalier d'Eon, Rousseau and New Ideas of Gender, Sexand the Self in the Late Eighteenth Century -- Anna Clark -- 14 Louvet's Les Amours du Chevalier de Faublas: Sexual, Politicaland Textual Imbroglios -- Simon Davies -- 15 An Eighteenth-Century French Commonwealthman?Exploring the Context of the Chevalier d'Eon's Translation ofMarchamont Nedham's Th e Excellencie of a Free State -- Rachel Hammersley. A Note on the d'Eon Archive in the Brotherton Collection,Leeds University Library -- Chris Sheppard -- AfterwordD'Eon: Christian, Woman and Autobiographer -- Gary Kates -- Index -- eCopyright.
Cross-dressing author, envoy, soldier and spy Charles d'Eon de Beaumont's unusual career fascinated his contemporaries and continues to attract historians, novelists, playwrights, filmmakers, image makers, cultural theorists and those concerned with manifestations of the extraordinary. D'Eon's significance as a historical figure was already being debated more than 45 years before his death.  Not surprisingly, such sensational material has attracted the attention of enthusiasts, scholars and literateurs to 'the strange case of the chevalier d'Eon'. He has also attracted the attention of psychologists and sexologists, and for most of the last century his gender transformation has been viewed through a Freudian lens. His cross-dressing, it was usually assumed, must have a psychosexual explanation. Until the second half of the twentieth century the terms 'Eonist' and 'Eonism' were the standard English words for transvestites and transvestism respectively, but 'Eonism' was also, thanks to Havelock Ellis, widely regarded as a psychological condition or compulsion. However, in the mid-twentieth century, new ideas about gender-identity disorders led to d'Eon being redefined not as a transvestite, but a transsexual - a person who considers their sex to have been 'misassigned'.   The essays in this collection contribute to d'Eon's rehabilitation as a figure worthy of scholarly attention and display a variety of disciplinary approaches. Drawing on new research into d'Eon's life, this volume offers original and nuanced readings of how a gender identity could come to be negotiated over time. ÂÂ.
9781441145451
Diplomats -- France -- Biography. Spies -- France -- Biography.