Research Catalog
Sex scandal : the private parts of Victorian fiction
- Title
- Sex scandal : the private parts of Victorian fiction / William A. Cohen.
- Author
- Cohen, William A.
- Publication
- Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 1996.
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| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text | Request in advance | PR878.S317 C64 1996 | Off-site |
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Details
- Description
- x, 256 pages; 24 cm.
- Summary
- Never has the Victorian novel appeared so perverse as it does in these pages - and never has its perversity seemed so fundamental to its accomplishment. By viewing this fiction alongside the most alarming public scandals of the day, Cohen exposes both the scandalousness of this literature and its sexiness.
- In narratives ranging from Great Expectations to the Boulton and Park sodomy scandal of 1870-71, from Eliot's and Trollope's novels about scandalous women to Oscar Wilde's writing and his trials for homosexuality. Cohen shows how, in each instance, sexuality appears couched in coded terms. He identifies an assortment of cunning narrative techniques used to insinuate sex into Victorian writing, demonstrating that even as such narratives air the scandalous subject, they emphasize its unspeakable nature.
- Written with an eye toward the sex scandals that still whet the appetites of consumers of news and novels, this work is suggestive about our own modes of imagining sexuality today and how we arrived at them.
- Series Statement
- Series Q
- Uniform Title
- Series Q.
- Subject
- English fiction > 19th century > History and criticism
- Scandals in literature
- Literature and society > Great Britain > History > 19th century
- Homosexuality and literature > Great Britain > History > 19th century
- Scandals > Great Britain > History > 19th century
- Sex in literature
- Great Britain > History > Victoria, 1837-1901
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Contents
- 1. Sex, Scandal, and the Novel -- 2. Manual Conduct in Great Expectations -- 3. Privacy and Publicity in the Victorian Sex Scandal -- 4. Schadenfreude in The Mill on the Floss -- 5. Trollope's Trollop -- 6. Indeterminate Wilde.
- ISBN
- 0822318563 (alk. paper)
- 0822318482 (pbk. : alk. paper)
- LCCN
- 96007641
- OCLC
- 34475364
- ocm34475364
- Owning Institutions
- Columbia University Libraries