Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender in English Erotic CultureCambridge University Press, 2004 - 261 pages Karen Harvey explores the construction of sexual difference and gender identity in eighteenth-century England. Using erotic texts and their illustrations, and rooting this evidence firmly in historical context, Harvey provides a thoroughgoing critique of the orthodoxy of work on sexual difference in the history of the body. She argues that eighteenth-century English erotic culture combined a distinctive mode of writing and reading in which the form of refinement was applied to the matter of sex. Erotic culture was male-centred and it was in this environment, Harvey argues, that men could enjoy both the bawdy, raucous, libidinous elements of the eighteenth century and the refined politeness for which the period is also renowned. This book makes a significant contribution to the history of masculinity and advocates an approach to change in gender history, one capable of capturing the processes of negotiation and contestation integral to cultural change. |
Contents
Pandoras Box Frontispiece to A New Description of Merryland | 1 |
c 4 By permission of the British Library | 14 |
69 | 21 |
Contexts | 35 |
James Worsdale The Limerick HellFire Club c 1736 | 72 |
Sexual difference | 78 |
A female body as grotto Frontispiece to Little Merlins Cave | 92 |
Female bodies | 102 |
The Torpedo or I am not what I seem Title page of The Electrical | 107 |
Propagation by the Bud and by the Branch In Great News from | 115 |
Male bodies | 124 |
Space | 146 |
The Peeper or a stolen View of Lady Cs Premises Inserted in | 153 |
Movement | 175 |
Pleasure | 199 |
Other editions - View all
Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender in English Erotic ... Karen Harvey No preview available - 2008 |
Common terms and phrases
amatory fiction Arbor Vitae Bacchanalian Magazine Beggar's Benison Bettyland breasts century chapter claims coffee houses conception context Delarivier Manley depictions described Description of Merryland discussed distinct Edmund Curll eighteenth Eighteenth-Century England eighteenth-century erotica Electrical Eel English erotic authors erotic books erotic culture Erotic Literature erotic material erotic texts Erotopolis example Fanny Hill female bodies feminine fertility Festival of Love Forty Select Poems Fruit-Shop Frutex Vulvaria gender genre Genuine Memoirs heterosexual Ibid Illustration images John Lady's Magazine Laqueur Libertine Literature Little Merlin's Cave Londa Schiebinger London lover male and female male bodies Man-Plant Maria Brown masculinity men's menstruation metaphor Miss Maria Brown Mother Midnight narrative narrator Natural History one-sex penis plant politeness pornography pubic hair rape readers reading representations Roy Porter sexual desire sexual difference sexual pleasure social spaces Spy on Mother suggested Teague-Root Display'd tree Voyage to Lethe Wisdom Reveal'd woman women women's bodies writing