This study explores the diverse representations of sexuality, eroticism, and gender as expressed in French and Francophone literary thought – both past and present. From Françoise de Graffigny’s epistolary “refusal” of eroticism – to the challenge of nineteenth-century notions of rape in the novels of Emile Zola, Victor Hugo, and Eugène Sue – to desire and eroticism as social taboo in the surrealist works of Georges Bataille and Luis Buñuel – its historical focus demonstrates that issues of sexuality, eroticism, and gender existed at the heart of France’s literary tradition long before they became a staple in its universities. Taking a more contemporary view, it examines the notion of écriture féminine in such authors as Monique Wittig, Anne F. Garréta, Nina Bouraoui, Assia Djebar, and Luce Iragaray, and also challenges accusations of misogyny in the works of Michel Houellebecq.

While glimpsing the evolution of, challenges to, and conceptions regarding sexuality, eroticism, and gender, each chapter’s author focuses on language as both the obstacle and catalyst for change. For example, feminist strategies to avoid linguistic gender markers that subvert the phallogocentric paradigm, literary portrayals of rape as a means to affect French penal code, and use of the female body as language demonstrate that these notions are not only shaped by language but that language represents the key to deconstructing and redefining them. Whether picking this up to read about familiar authors such as Hugo and Djebar or discovering Graffigny and Houellebecq for the first time, each chapter promises to shed new light on its subject matter in regards to sexuality, eroticism, and/or gender.