Bachelors, Bastards, and Nomadic Masculinity:
Illegitimacy in Guy de Maupassant and André Gide
Robert M. Fagley, PhD
University of Pittsburgh, 2009
This dissertation is a thematic exploration of bachelor figures and male bastards in
literary works by Guy de Maupassant and André Gide. The coupling of Maupassant and Gide is
appropriate for such an analysis, not only because of their mutual treatment of illegitimacy, but also because each writer represents a chronologically identifiable literary movement, Realism and Modernism, and each writes during contiguous moments of socio-legal changes particularly related to divorce law and womens rights, which consequently have great influence on the legal destiny of illegitimate or natural children. Napoleons Civil Code of 1804 provides the legal(patriarchal) framework for the period of this study of illegitimacy, from about 1870 to 1925.
The Civil Code saw numerous changes during this period. The Naquet Law of 1884, which
reestablished limited legal divorce, represents the central socio-legal event of the turn of the
century in matters of legitimacy, whereas the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the First World
War furnish chronological bookends for this dissertation. Besides through history, law, and
sociology, this dissertation treats illegitimacy through the lens of various branches of gender
theory, particularly the study of masculinities and a handful of other important critical theories, most importantly those of Michel Foucault, Eve Sedgwick and of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.
Bachelors and bastards are two principal players in the representation of illegitimacy in
Maupassant and Gide, but this study considers the theme of illegitimacy as extended beyond
simple questions of legitimate versus illegitimate children. The male bastard is only one of the counterfeit characters examined in these authors fictional texts. This dissertation is divided into three parts which consider specific thematic elements of their bastard narratives. Part One frames the representation in fiction of bachelor figures and how they contribute to or the role they play in instances of illegitimacy. Part Two springs from and develops the metaphor of the counterfeit coin, whether represented by a bastard son, an affected schoolboy, a false priest, or a pretentious littérateur. Part Three explains the concept of nomadic masculine practices; such practices include nomadic styles of masculinity development as well as the bastards nomadism.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-08132009-140705 |
| Date | 30 September 2009 |
| Creators | Fagley, Robert M |
| Contributors | Dr. Giuseppina Mecchia, Dr. Scott Kiesling, Dr. Lina Insana, Dr. Todd Reeser |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-08132009-140705/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.0113 seconds