The Art of Friendship in France, from the Revolution to the Great War

What would the literature and history of nineteenth-century France look like if they were viewed not through the lens of desire and sexuality or conflictual class relations—but instead through that of friendship? The Art of Friendship in France, from the Revolution to the Great War offers an interdisciplinary and wide-ranging answer to that question. Bringing together literary scholars and historians from France, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, this special issue of Romanic Review considers nineteenth-century French friendship in its diverse manifestations. From the vicissitudes of real-life friendships, via theories and philosophies of truly disinterested affection, to literary representations that tend to place friendship in unstable opposition to desire, the contributors to this volume reveal friendship to have been the background hum of nineteenth-century thinking about human relationships, all the more powerful for being so often unspoken.