The Chevalier d'Eon and his Worlds

Gender, Espionage and Politics in the Eighteenth Century

Simon Burrows, Jonathan Conlin, Russell Goulbourne, Valerie Mainz

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780826422781
• eBook ISBN: 9781441174048
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: French History
• Index: History

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.

Index

abduction, see plots, to murder or kidnap d’Eon

Abrégé de la vie de Louis Mandrin 133

absolutism 233

Académie française 25, 165

accessories 98, 99, 103, 106

account book 97, 106, 107, 109

Achilles 173

actors 120

Adélaïde, sister of Faublas, fictional character 203–4

Adhémar, Jean-Balthazar, Comte d’ 28

adultery scandals 15, 118–19

adultresses 118–19

after-life of d’Eon 129

agricultural revolution 73

Aiguillon, Armand du Plessis, Duc d’ 51, 55 n.43

Alfieri, Vittorio 119

Algarotti, Francesco 157

Almaviva, Comte d’, fictional character 60, 68, 202, 211

Almon, John 224, 228 n.69

Alther, Lisa 155

Amazon(s) 8–9, 83, 85, 165, 166, 149, 152–3, 165–9, 173

and d’Eon 124, 189, 194–5

Amazones modernes 167

Amazones révoltées 167

Amelot de Chaillou, Antoine-Jean 104

America 172

American colonies 5, 34, 54 n.18, 116, 218

American Declaration of Independence 78

American Psychiatric Association 150

American Revolution 78

American revolutionaries 63, 68, 209

Americans 116

Amerongen, Gerrit van 198

Amour valley 75

Amours du Chevalier de Faublas 9, 201–12

androgeny 84, 94 n.30

Angelo, Domenico 117

Angelo, Henri 87–8, 98–9, 107, 117, 109

Angelucci, Guillaume 57–8, 68, 69 n.2

Anglomania 213 n.61

Anna Ivanova, Empress of Russia 168

Année littéraire 25, 48

anti-Catholicism 124

anti-clericalism 222

anti-religious publishing 222

anti-semitism 22 n.28

Antoine, Michel 26

Apologie des dames 169

Apology for the Life of Colley Cibbe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Career and Politics 1762–1785
• Gender and Representation
• Heroes and Heroines
• A Note on the d’Eon Archive in the Brotherton Collection,Leeds University Library
• AfterwordD’Eon: Christian, Woman and Autobiographer
• Index
• eCopyright