The Cross-Cultural Power of Yuri: Riyoko Ikeda’s Queer Rhetorics of Place-Making in The Rose of Versailles

The Cross-Cultural Power of Yuri: Riyoko Ikeda’s Queer Rhetorics of Place-Making in The Rose of Versailles

Peitho Volume 19 Issue 2 Spring/Summer 2017

Author(s): Kimberly D. Thompson

Abstract: This article analyzes the first four episodes of the adapted Japanese animation of Riyoko Ikeda’s The Rose of Versailles to illustrate the value of examining queer rhetorical practices of place-making in transnational texts. Set in the late eighteenth century, The Rose of Versailles provides viewers a glimpse of the French Revolution through the main character Lady Oscar, the gender-bending bodyguard and advisor of Marie Antoinette. By queering place and space, Ikeda develops an alternative narrative of eighteenth century France that illuminates queer possibilities of being.

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