Minorités sexuelles et libertinage dans l’oeuvre d’Evdokia Nagrodskaïa

Abstract

The author aims to present the work of Evdokia Nagrodskaia, a Russian author now fallen into oblivion. To do this, he briefly discusses the literary context of the time and her biography, before analyzing in greater depth her book The Wrath of Dionysus, which was a bestseller in Russia in the early 20th century. He tries, through the analysis of this novel, to rediscover a novelist both despised by the Russian intelligentsia for writing popular literature, and strongly criticized by the former censors for treating themes related both to female adultery, homosexuality and lesbianism. By that he’s trying to show that Nagrodskaia is primarily a novelist avant-garde which deals with libertinism far more than pornography and that her freethinking is both sexual and political.