Gallantry and Matrimonial Heterosexuality: Love and Friendship in Scudéry's Carte de Tendre (1654). (2nd April 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Dupas, Matthieu
• Is Part Of: Exemplaria. Volume 32:Number 2(2020)
• Page Start: 130
• Page End: 144
• Publication Date: 2020-04-02
• Subjects: love -- friendship -- galanterie -- "préciosité" -- "tendre" -- heterosexuality -- gender -- Scudéry; European literature -- Renaissance, 1450-1600 -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Literature, Medieval -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Middle Ages -- Periodicals; 809.0205
• DOI: 10.1080/10412573.2020.1810969
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1041-2573

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article reads Scudéry's Carte de Tendre from the viewpoint of the history of sexuality. Scholars have argued that Scudéry's map, by implementing a reconfiguration of emotions, paves the way for modern affective subjectivity. I suggest that by virtue of a deferral of sex typical of gallantry, the Carte de Tendre pictures a tension between two economies of feelings in relation to sex: two erotics . While drawing on a homoerotic conception of friendship — redefined as "tender friendship" once women are given access to it — the map points to a modern de-eroticized, or heterosocial, definition of friendship in contrast with (hetero)sexual love. It suggests that the access of women to friendship in seventeenth-century France has played an important role in the development of sexuality as a heteronormative apparatus in the modern era.