Abstract
Conventional political history is notorious for the ‘maleness’ of its exposition, and standard accounts of the Dreyfus Affair all too readily conform to this stereotype. As an espionage tale, the Affair falls within the masculine arenas of diplomatic and military history, while as a story of political crisis, its main characters remain ministers, jurists, and polemicists.1 The history of the struggle between ‘intellectuals’ and ‘anti-intellectuals,’ moreover, focuses attention on the leading lights of French academia and literature, almost all men, who tussled over the primary values of French politics and society.2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See Douglas Johnson, France and the Dreyfus Affair (London: Blandford Press, 1966)
and Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: the Case of Alfred Dreyfus, trans. Jeffrey Mehlman (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1987);
for remarkable work which shows the new possibilities in military history see André Bach, L’Armée de Dreyfus: Une histoire politique de l’armée française de Charles X à l’Affaire ( Paris: Tallandier, 2004 ).
See Pascal Ory and Jean-François Sirinelli, Les intellectuels en France de l’Affaire Dreyfus à nos jours (Paris: Armand Colin, 1986)
for an earlier generational ‘take’ on the intellectuals, as well as Jean-François Sirinelli’s Intellectuels et passions françaises (Paris: Fayard, 1990);
see also the pioneering article by Jean and Monica Charlot, ‘Un rassemblement d’intellectuels: La Ligue des Droits de l’Homme,’ Revue française de science politique, 9 (1959): 995–1019;
for more classic statements of the role of the intellectuals in the Dreyfus camp (as well as their opponents) see Christophe Charle, ‘Champ littéraire et champ du pouvoir: Les écrivains et l’Affaire Dreyfus,’ Annales, ESC, 32 (1977): 240–64 and his later Naissance des ‘intellectuels’: 1880–1900 (Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1990).
For more reconceptualization see Michel Winock, Le Siècle des intellectuels (Paris: Seuil, 1997), which examines the relationships between the two sides.
Much important and focused work on these debates has been conducted by Vincent Duclert who sums up much of his research in his ‘Anti-intellectualisme et intellectuals pendant l’affaire Dreyfus,’ Mil neuf cent. Revue d’histoire intellectuelle, 15 (1977): 69–83. There are many other important strands in the historiography and increasing material on the relationship of institutions of the state to the political crisis, as well as cultural and social histories of anti-Semitism and popular political mobilization.
Marcel Thomas’s classic Esterhazy ou l’envers de l’Affaire Dreyfus (Paris: Vernal/ Philippe Lebaud, 1989) gives a brilliant sense of Esterhazy’s world and the place of women in it.
See Mary Louise Roberts, Disruptive Acts: the New Woman in Fin-de-Siècle France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)
for more on female journalists, pp. 107–30; see also Michelle Perrot, ‘Lucie et Alfred’ (Avant-propos), in Vincent Duclert (ed.), ‘Ecris-moi souvent, écris-moi longuement…’: Correspondance de l’île du Diable (1894–1899) (Paris: Ed. Mille et une nuits, 2005), pp. 9–21
and Duclert’s introduction. Duclert’s magisterial biography, Alfred Dreyfus: l’Honneur d’un patriote (Paris: Fayard, 2006) gives Lucie her due throughout.For more on women’s ecumenical and compassionate impulses see my‘Letters to Lucie: Spirituality, Friendship and Politics during the Dreyfus Affair,’ French Historical Studies, 28 (4) (Fall, 2005), pp. 601–28. Elizabeth Everton, ‘Women and the Anti-Dreyfusard Movement: Representation and Participation,’ an unpublished proposal for a doctoral dissertation in history at the University of California at Los Angeles, cited with kind permission of the author.
Gender analysis has also contributed to new perspectives, with Christopher Forth’s book on diverging visions of masculinity leading the way; see his The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) for the first examination of ‘body politics.’
Willa Z. Silverman, The Notorious Life of Gyp: Right Wing Anarchist in fin-de-siècle France ( New York, Oxford University Press, 1995 ), p. 142.
See the story of the ‘philology’ experts in Bertrand Joly, ‘Ecole des Chartes et l’Affaire Dreyfus,’ Bibliothèque de l’Ecole de Chartes, 147 (1989): 611–71.
For more on the Marquise, see Franz Cumont, La Marquise Arconati-Visconti (1840–1923): Quelques souvenirs (Gaasbeek, 1977)
and Carolo Bronne, La Marquise Arconati: La dernière châtelaine de Gassbeek (Brussels: Les Cahiers historiques, 1970).
For the important role of historians in the struggle see Madeleine Réberioux, ‘Histoire, historiens et dreyfusisme,’ Revue historique, 240 (1976): 407–32.
The Marquise was particularly connected to Gabriel Monod, whose intervention in the Affair was crucial; see Rémy Rioux, “‘Saint-Monod-la-critique” et “l’obsédante Affaire Dreyfus,”’ Comment sont-ils devenus dreyfusards ou anti-dreyfusards? Mil neuf-cent, Revue d’histoire intellectuelle, 11 (1993): 33–8.
For an overview, see Anne-Martin Fugier, Les salons de la IIIe République: Art, littérature et politique (Paris: Perrin, 2003);
see Steven Kale, French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability from the Old Regime to the Revolution of 1848 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004)
and Sylvie Aprile in ‘La République au salon: vie et mort d’une forme de sociabilité politique, 1865–1885,’ Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 38 (1991): 473–87.
There are many anecdotal accounts that are helpful: André de Rouquières, Cinquante ans de panache (Paris: Pierre Flore, 1951)
and Cornelia Otis Skinner, Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals: Paris-La Belle Epoque (London: Michael Joseph, 1963)
and Joanna Richardson, The Courtesans: the Demi-Monde in 19th-Century France (London: Phoenix, 2000).
For the arguments about ‘performance’ see Mary Louise Roberts, Disruptive Acts and her‘Acting Up: the Feminist Theatrics of Marquerite Durand,’ French Historical Studies, 19(4) (Fall 1996): 1103–38, as well as the collection of essays edited by Jo Burr Margadant, The New Biography: Performing Femininity in Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
Mme Arman de Cavaillet, the famous muse of Anatole France, literally relegated her husband to the kitchen while she ‘fronted’ intellectual matters in the study, dining room, and drawing room. She lived for France’s literary career, edited his work, and sometimes even inserted her own prose into his literary criticism. See Jeanne Pouquet, Le Salon de Mme Arman de Cavaillet ( Paris: Hachette, 1926 ).
Gérard Baal, ‘Un Salon dreyfusard, des lendemains de l’Affaire à la Grande Guerre: La Marquise Arconati-Visconti et ses amis,’ Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 28 (1981): 433–63.
This view was enshrined in Goethe’s play of 1788, which had incidental music written for it by Beethoven in 1809. Historical weight was added to this view by the American historian, John Lothrop Motley in his The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1876)
Gabriel Monod, ‘Les débuts d’Alphonse Peyrat dans la critique historique,’ Revue historique, 96 (1908): 1–49. Monod wrote this article in recognition of the Marquise’s patronage of historical scholarship in France.
For more on the brothers see Jean-Yves Mollier, Le scandale de Panama (Paris: Fayard, 1991), pp. 209–38
and Pierre Birnbaum, Les fous de la République: Histoire politique des Juifs d’État de Gambetta à Vichy ( Paris: Fayard, 1992 ), pp. 13–28.
See the authoritative Bertrand Joly, Déroulède: L’inventeur du nationalisme ( Paris: Perrin, 1998 ).
See Vanessa R. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-siècle Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); ‘Walter Benjamin for Historians’, American Historical Review, 106(2001):1721–43;
Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown, Fame and its History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986);
Gregory Shaya, ‘The Flâneur, the Badaud, and the Making of a Mass Public in France, circa 1860– 1910,’ American Historical Review, 109 (2004): 41–77;
Dominique Kalifa, La culture de masse en France, vol. 1 (1860–1930) (Paris: La Découverte 2001 );
Jean-Pierre Rioux and Jean-François Sirinelli (eds), La culture de masse en France de la Belle Epoque à aujourd’hui ( Paris: Hachette, 2002 ).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2010 Ruth Harris
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Harris, R. (2010). Two Salonnières during the Dreyfus Affair: the Marquise Arconati Visconti and Gyp. In: Forth, C.E., Accampo, E. (eds) Confronting Modernity in Fin-de-Siècle France. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230246843_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230246843_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-30645-9
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-24684-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)