GLR May-June 2026

Laurence Senelick in an essay in The G&LR (July–August 2020) provided an in sightful take on the reputed queerness of King Henri III and his court. The King’s fa vorites were disparagingly called the mignons (“pretty boys”) by his foes. He had

cient national rivalries. When he was fa tally stabbed in 1589—by a Catholic ex tremist Dominican friar—it was the end of the House of Valois. Reportedly, Parisians cheered the death of the volup tuary king.

THE ISLAND OF HERMAPHRODITES Translated by Kathleen Perry Long ACMRS Press 192 pages, $29.95

Professor Long’s detailed introduction highlights the con tinuing mystery of the authorship of The Island of Hermaphro dites . The 17th-century attribution to Thomas Artus, dit Sieur d’Embry, points to another pseudonym: the author of stylisti cally related short treatises on morality and a lengthy history of the Ottoman Empire. Long situates the work in the context of the 16th-century Wars of Religion. Beyond war and political

surrounded himself with carousing buddies as a young prince in the court at the Louvre. Some mignons followed him to Kraków when he was elected King of Poland (1573–75). They aston ished the Poles by the extravagance of the French retinue. The French, by contrast, found the Polish court rustic. Henri and his mignons gladly rushed back to the luxury of the Louvre when he became King of France (1574–89) upon his older brother’s

turmoil, she also explores the over-the-top architectural style of the time, when orna mentation was pushed to ostentatious, im posing, fulsome excess. I couldn’t help thinking of Trump’s reconstruction of the White House. She examines the sumptuary laws of the

untimely death. The French populace de tested Henri’s court, and it was widely con demned as decadent and impious. Historians are divided on whether sodomy was actually rampant in court or whether it was meant as a political smear. Henri did marry and was known to have

What are we to make of this entertaining, bizarre text? Is it sa ti rical? Does it present a sexual utopia?

time designed to protect the social order: the supremacy of the royal family, the wealthy ostentation of a middle class enriched by colonization, and the distinction of the sexes. I particularly appreciated her analysis of the banquets and dietary customs of the islanders. She explores adaptations of classical Galenic med ical tomes into Renaissance dietary or health regimen manuals ( régimes de santé ). These are the texts that first drew me into the history of medicine back in 1986, when I discovered to my amazement that the traditional order of a full French menu still follows Hippocratic principles of the four humors. It is hard not to make historical associations with present day events when we learn that the laws of the Island permit homicides “provided that they will have increased [the perpe trators’] wealth and properties.” The Prince and their officers are allowed any treachery and bribery as long as it enriches themselves, whereas those who do good for others “be despised as stupid people and without wit.” “[W]e wish that he who has the most authority, friends, riches, and status be the ones who wins his [legal] case, however unjust his rights may be.” The complex political satire could just as well be applied to dissim ulating, deceitful, and intriguing congresspeople tweeting and posing for the camera, cravenly vying for the approval of their sun(tanned) king. Perhaps it is simply that bad government and kleptocracy have never gone out of style and are uncannily marked by decorative excess and Baroque gilding. The exotic setting in the era of exploration and colonization further offers itself to post-colonial interpretations of the en counter between “civilized” European men and the unnatural semi-humans they “discovered” in the New World, adorned with flashy gold jewelry and parrot feathers. It also reminds me of the revulsed astonishment of 19th-century European physi cians upon discovering “psychosexual hermaphrodites”—the Victorian ancestors of “sexual inverts” and homosexuals. Long’s rich introduction gestures to these and many more queer readings of The Island of Hermaphrodites , a text that re mains prodigiously peculiar. Long’s translation finally makes it available to many more readers. Even French readers will ap preciate Long’s meticulous scholarship in contextualizing the text. Maybe someone will pitch it as a reality show!

several mistresses, but he never sired children. Chroniclers, however, document his intense affections for his mignons and his prolonged, tearful grief when any of them died. Broadsides and scabrous pamphlets accused Henri and his courtiers of ex travagance, effeminacy, and buggery. Sodomite or not, Henri had countless enemies and was caught in the vise of multiple political conflicts: a dynastic struggle, the French Wars of Re ligion (between Catholics and Huguenot Protestants), and an

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