the rhetoric of sexual difference in British literature, 1700-1750 /
Todd C. Parker
Albany :
State University of New York Press,
2000
x, 218 pages ;
24 cm
Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-209) and index
Onania: self-pollution and the danger of female sexuality -- Swift and the political anus -- Pope's to Cobham and To a lady: empiricism and the synecdochic woman -- Haywood's Philidore and Placentia or What the eunuch lost -- Reading the rhetoric of sexual difference in Cleland's memoirs of a woman of pleasure
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"A 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 as 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 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."--Jacket
Rhetoric of sexual difference in British literature, 1700-1750
English language-- 18th century-- Rhetoric
English language-- Great Britain-- Rhetoric
English literature-- 18th century-- History and criticism