Virilité et pouvoir dans l’imaginaire des textes érotiques de la Révolution

Abstract

Throughout the French Revolution, a number of texts of varying tonality (pornographic, satirical, pamphleteering, etc.) and reflecting a range of political positions exploited an imaginary of power and of virility expressed in terms of sexual potency. The phantasmic narrative of the erotic texts offered the foundational figure of Hercules, who, in political propaganda, became the emblem of the people, trading in his male member in order to wield a Republican club. This figure, which raises a number of questions, was deconstructed by Sade in La Philosophie dans le boudoir through a radically new figure of masculinity uniting both the phallic and the anal.