Homosexuality in Early Modern France

Abstract

A historical dictionary of early modern France published in 1996 has entries for ‘Love’ (courtship and marriage), ‘Sexuality’ (premarital and extra-conjugal sex, masturbation and rape), and ‘Sexual Deviancies’ (prostitution and homosexuality).1 This classification of homosexuality as deviant in a work of scholarship testifies to the negative attitude toward non-conventional sexuality prevalent among French academics, who remain by and large indifferent or even hostile to gay studies. Professional historians in France have been reluctant to work in gay history and have left the field to independent (and poorly funded) scholars in their own country and to professional historians elsewhere. Some professional historians may be homophobic, like Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, a leading historian of early modern France, who has written newspaper attacks on Gay Pride marches and homosexual partnerships as ‘contrary to the Judeo-Christian heritage.’2 Others object to gay history on purportedly scholarly grounds. They may argue, for example, that homosexuality is an aspect of private life unworthy of historical study (an objection that has lost much of its force as historians bring more and more of past private life under scrutiny).