Lady Oscar: Between Genres and Genders

'Lady Oscar' or 'La Rose de Versailles', is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Riyoko Ikeda. The series is a historical drama set in the years preceding and during the French Revolution. Using a combination of historical personages and original characters, The Rose of Versailles focuses primarily on the lives of two women: the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, and Oscar François de Jarjayes, who serves as commander of the Royal Guard.

Christina Parte, "Lady Oscar: Shojo Warrior at the Crossroads of S Relationships and Queer Desire"

In the 1970s Riyoko Ikedawas at the forefront of Japanese female artists, who revolutionised the genre of shojo manga (manga for girls).  Whether the depiction of cross-dressing, androgynous looking youth subverting Japanese heteronormativity is contained by the world of shojo or goes beyond it, has been hotly debated and will be revisited from a transnational perspective.

Frances Clemente, "A queer and feminist icon? The reception of Lady Oscar in Italy today"

For decades, queer and feminist Italian activists have been reclaiming the figure of Lady Oscar as a queer and feminist icon. Today, as right-wing and far right-wing political parties widen their consensus through discriminatory campaigns against LGBTQIA+ people, Lady Oscar has made a return to the cultural, social, and political debate, entering discussions among Italian parliamentarians. The paper will focus on the state of Lady Oscar’s reception in Italy today and its political implications.

Alessandra Aloisi, "Embodied Politics in Jacques Demy’s Lady Oscar: A Cinematographic Take on Class, Gender, and the French Revolution"

A commissioned film, apparently flawed and in many ways secondary within Jacques Demy’s filmography, Lady Oscar(1979) distinctively intertwines themes of class, gender, and crossdressing during the period of the French Revolution. Who is the Lady Oscar portrayed by the French director – strong and vulnerable at the same time, too feminine and not feminine enough? A queer icon? A pucelle guerrière? Or, perhaps, a truly unclassifiable and inappropriable heroine?

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The Centre for French and Francophone Research provides a showcase for the diversity of French and Francophone studies in a global context across several disciplines at UCL, including literary studies, history, philosophy, art history, anthropology, global health, and the physical sciences. The goal is to create a space for researchers and students from across the university broadly interested in the French-speaking world to share their work and to promote interdisciplinary collaboration.

Image credit: Cosplayers of Oscar François de Jarjayes at Romics 2014 Spring. Photo by Claudio Marinangeli, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons