La sodomie dans l’affaire Théophile de Viau : questions de genre et de sexualité dans la France du premier xviie siècle

Sodomy in the Theophile de Viau affair: questions of gender and sexuality in early modern France.There is a puzzling misunderstanding about the Theophile affair. While the historiography of libertinism, focusing on erudite libertinism, no longer mentions sodomy as a key issue of the trial, historians of homosexual repression address sexual encounters between men in an essentialist approach, making no distinction between early modern sodomy and contemporary homosexuality. Thus, in the first part of this article, I emphasize that sodomy is a central point in Theophile’s trial both as a literary matter and as an illicit act. In the second part, I historicize sexual encounters between men by arguing that one should not equate sodomy with male homosexuality. Sodomy refers to anal sex between men and women as well. Even when it refers to anal sex between men, it postulates no erotic preference and has nothing to do with any sexual orientation. As a theological concept, it does not pertain to sexuality at all. Finally, it is not associated with gender deviance. In the third part, I suggest that discourse about sodomy must not conceal other discourses among sexual behaviors between men in early modern France and may not be a sufficient means to discuss them. In short, the purpose of this article is to clear the way toward a history of male homosexuality in early modern France from a historicist if not constructionist perspective