Sexing the text : the rhetoric of sexual difference in British literature, 1700-1750

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Bibliographic Information

Sexing the text : the rhetoric of sexual difference in British literature, 1700-1750

Todd C. Parker

State University of New York Press, c2000

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-209) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

An important contribution to the study of the history of sexuality, this book examines the emergence of a new kind of heterosexual rhetoric in the early eighteenth century, a rhetoric that ultimately displaced earlier and more diverse expressions of sexuality and the body. Drawing on traditional scholarly methods as well recent queer-theoretical perspectives, the book traces the rise of the modern paradigm of compulsory heterosexuality, and counters certain feminist assumptions about the nature of "masculinity" and "male character" during the period. Throughout, Parker offers intriguing readings of a variety of texts, including the fiercely homophobic pamphlet Onania; or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution, Jonathan Swift's political satires on William Wood and Richard Tighe, Alexander Pope's poems To Cobham and To a Lady, Eliza Haywood's romance novel Philidore and Placentia, and John Cleland's pornographic novel Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: Sexuality and the "Natural" Subject of the Early Eighteenth Century One Onania: Self-Pollution and the Danger of Female Sexuality Two Swift and the Political Anus Three Pope's To Cobham and To a Lady: Empiricism and the Synecdochic Woman Four Haywood's Philidore and Placentia, or What the Eunuch Lost Five Reading the Rhetoric of Sexual Difference in Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure Coda Notes Bibliography Index

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