|
Showing 1 - 6 of
6 matches in All Departments
This book argues that rape as we know it was invented in the
eighteenth century, examining texts as diverse as medical
treatises, socio-political essays, and popular novels to
demonstrate how cultural assumptions of gendered sexual desire
erased rape by making a women’s non-consent a logical
impossibility. The Enlightenment promotion of human sexuality as
natural and desirable required a secularized narrative for how
sexual violence against women functioned. Novel bio-medical and
historical theories about the "natural" sex act worked to erase the
concept of heterosexual rape. McAlpin intervenes in a far-ranging
assortment of scholarly disciplines to survey and demonstrate how
rape was rationalized: the history of medicine, the history of
sexuality, the development of the modern self, the social
contractarian tradition, the global eighteenth century, and the
libertine tradition in the eighteenth-century novel. This
intervention will be essential reading to students and scholars in
gender studies, literature, cultural studies, visual studies, and
the history of sexuality.
In her study of eighteenth-century literature and medical
treatises, Mary McAlpin takes up the widespread belief among
cultural philosophers of the French Enlightenment that society was
gravely endangered by the effects of hyper-civilization. McAlpin's
study explores a strong thread in this rhetoric of decline: the
belief that premature puberty in young urban girls, supposedly
brought on by their exposure to lascivious images, titillating
novels, and lewd conversations, was the source of an increasing
moral and physical degeneration. In how-to hygiene books intended
for parents, the medical community declared that the only cure for
this obviously involuntary departure from the "natural" path of
sexual development was the increased surveillance of young girls.
As these treatises by vitalist and vitalist-inspired physiologists
became increasingly common in the 1760s, McAlpin shows, so, too,
did the presence of young, vulnerable, and virginal heroines in the
era's novels. Analyzing novels by, among others, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Denis Diderot, and Choderlos de Laclos, she offers
physiologically based readings of many of the period's most famous
heroines within the context of an eighteenth-century discourse on
women and heterosexual desire that broke with earlier periods in
recasting female and male desire as qualitatively distinct. Her
study persuasively argues that the Western view of women's
sexuality as a mysterious, nebulous force-Freud's "dark
continent"-has its secular origins in the mid-eighteenth century.
In her study of eighteenth-century literature and medical
treatises, Mary McAlpin takes up the widespread belief among
cultural philosophers of the French Enlightenment that society was
gravely endangered by the effects of hyper-civilization. McAlpin's
study explores a strong thread in this rhetoric of decline: the
belief that premature puberty in young urban girls, supposedly
brought on by their exposure to lascivious images, titillating
novels, and lewd conversations, was the source of an increasing
moral and physical degeneration. In how-to hygiene books intended
for parents, the medical community declared that the only cure for
this obviously involuntary departure from the "natural" path of
sexual development was the increased surveillance of young girls.
As these treatises by vitalist and vitalist-inspired physiologists
became increasingly common in the 1760s, McAlpin shows, so, too,
did the presence of young, vulnerable, and virginal heroines in the
era's novels. Analyzing novels by, among others, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Denis Diderot, and Choderlos de Laclos, she offers
physiologically based readings of many of the period's most famous
heroines within the context of an eighteenth-century discourse on
women and heterosexual desire that broke with earlier periods in
recasting female and male desire as qualitatively distinct. Her
study persuasively argues that the Western view of women's
sexuality as a mysterious, nebulous force-Freud's "dark
continent"-has its secular origins in the mid-eighteenth century.
This study examines authorial consciousness in the fifteen-year
correspondence between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his most devoted
fan, Marie-Anne de La Tour, who claimed to incarnate his heroine
Julie of ""La Nouvelle Heloise"". Far from the starry-eyed
obsessive she is now assumed to have been, de La Tour was a woman
writer eager for fame who pursued her goal of becoming an
""author"" through the vehicle of a private correspondence with a
celebrity. In the eighteenth century, with the vogue for publishing
the private in full force, missive letters were accorded great
esthetic and publication value. Suspicion of intent to publish by
writers of private letters was common, but this awareness has now
been lost as the letter form has lost its publication potential. De
La Tour's project of creating a publishable ""private""
correspondence with a famous author raises theoretical issues
relevant not only to eighteenth-century studies but also to
epistolary studies, reader-response theory, and gender theory. Mary
McAlpin is Associate Professor of French and Chair of the French
program at the University of Tennessee.
|
You may like...
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
|