French Literature Reviews - 2026
Z. Stahuljak, L'archéologie pornographique. Médecine, Moyen Âge et histoire de France
History, Politics and Society
L'archéologie pornographique. Médecine, Moyen Âge et histoire de France
Zrinka Stahuljak
Presses Universitaires de Rennes
392 p.
ISBN : 978-2-7535-7454-0
Price: 26.00 €
Nineteenth-century medicine—serving as the primary intellectual, moral, and disciplinary engine behind the modern formation of the French nation and the writing of French history—grounded all of its theories and legislative proposals in the medieval period. This study demonstrates how history and the Middle Ages, as medical obsessions, shaped family life, marriage, divorce, public health (diseases, vices, and flaws), social morals, and racial and colonial policies in Europe.
Zrinka Stahuljak is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She has authored several books on the Middle Ages, notably Bloodless Genealogies of the French Middle Ages (2005), and co-authored The Adventures of Gillion de Trazegnies: Chivalry and Romance in the Medieval East (2015) and Thinking Through Chrétien de Troyes (2011). Her forthcoming book, Medieval Fixers (Les Fixeurs au Moyen Âge), is the subject of a lecture series at the Collège de France (June 2018).
The nineteenth century in France saw a significant intersection between the emerging medical sciences and the construction of national identity. During this period, scholars and practitioners often turned to the medieval past to establish moral, social, and biological norms. This intellectual tradition utilized historical narratives to justify legislative frameworks regarding public health and family structures. By situating the Middle Ages as a foundational reference point, nineteenth-century thinkers sought to define the parameters of French society through the lens of medical discourse, which often integrated concepts of vice, disease, and heredity into the broader political project of nation-building.
L'archéologie pornographique. Médecine, Moyen Âge et histoire de France by Zrinka Stahuljak examines how history and the Middle Ages, as medical obsessions, shaped family life, marriage, divorce, public health, social morals, and racial and colonial policies in Europe. The study considers how nineteenth-century medicine served as an intellectual, moral, and disciplinary engine behind the formation of the French nation and the writing of French history. Readers interested in the history of medicine or the historiography of the Middle Ages may find this work relevant.