Honors Theses and Capstones

Date of Award

Spring 2015

Project Type

Senior Honors Thesis

College or School



Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Program or Major


Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

First Advisor

Claire Malarte-Feldman


This thesis, originally written in French, aims to explore the ways in which male homosexuality is represented and defined in contemporary French literature through the novels of André Gide and Hervé Guibert. I will argue and defend the existence of two cultural domains of existence, the private and public, and how each is represented in Les Faux-monnayeurs (1925) and À l'ami qui ne m'a pas sauvé la vie (1990), respectively. French literature of the 20th century in regards to homosexuality endured a cultural and sociological evolution that resulted in the disappearance of the private domain and the creation of the public, as a result of numerous sociological phenomena including a relaxation of cultural mores and the rise of AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s. Though this subject matter remains relatively unexplored in French academic studies, it is necessary to study and analyze these works, as their pertinence to today's current events cannot go unobserved.