Visualizing the nation
Subtitle: gender, representation, and revolution in eighteenth-century France
By: Joan B. Landes.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Ithaca
Number of pages: 254
Subjects: Art, French; Art -- Political aspects -- France; Nationalism and art -- France; Sex role in art; Allegories; Body, Human -- Symbolic aspects -- France -- History -- 18th century; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Art and the revolution
Genres: Art and the revolution.
Description: "Popular images of women were everywhere in revolutionary France. Landes highlights the widespread circulation of images of the female body, notwithstanding the political leadership's suspicions of the dangers of feminine influence and the seductions of visual imagery. The use of caricatures and allegories contributed to the destruction of the masculinized images of hierarchic absolutism and to forging new roles for men and women in both the intimate and public arenas.

Landes tells the story of how the depiction of the nation as a desirable female body worked to eroticize patriotism and to bind male subjects to the nation-state. Despite their political subordination, women too were invited to identify with the project of nationalism."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 233-250) and index.
Table of contents: title: Image as argument in revolutionary political culture; title: Representing the body politic; title: Embodiments of female virtue; title: Possessing La Patrie: nationalism and sexuality in revolutionary culture.