
Perverse Romanticism
Aesthetics and Sexuality in Britain, 1750-1832
Richard C. Sha(Author)
Johns Hopkins University Press
Published on 9. March 2009
Book
Hardback
376 pages
978-0-8018-9041-3 (ISBN)
Description
Richard C. Sha's revealing study considers how science shaped notions of sexuality, reproduction, and gender in the Romantic period. Through careful and imaginative readings of various scientific texts, the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Longinus, and the works of such writers as William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Lord Byron, Sha explores the influence of contemporary aesthetics and biology on literary Romanticism. Revealing that ideas of sexuality during the Romantic era were much more fluid and undecided than they are often characterized in the existing scholarship, Sha's innovative study complicates received claims concerning the shift from perversity to perversion in the nineteenth century. He observes that the questions of perversity-or purposelessness-became simultaneously critical in Kantian aesthetics, biological functionalism, and Romantic ideas of private and public sexuality. The Romantics, then, sought to reconceptualize sexual pleasure as deriving from mutuality rather than from the biological purpose of reproduction.
At the nexus of Kantian aesthetics, literary analysis, and the history of medicine, Perverse Romanticism makes an important contribution to the study of sexuality in the long eighteenth century.
At the nexus of Kantian aesthetics, literary analysis, and the history of medicine, Perverse Romanticism makes an important contribution to the study of sexuality in the long eighteenth century.
Reviews / Votes
An impressive display of Sha's masterful grasp of a wide range of scholarly literature, and a provocative thesis that will be of interest to academics in all three fields. -- Katie Gray H-Net Reviews 2009 Sha brings to these topics a keen intelligence buttressed by up-to-the-minute scholarship... He dazzles by the quantity and breadth of his reading and embodies the best interdisciplinary approaches so many scholars tout but rarely incorporate. -- George Rousseau Social History of Medicine 2010 His theoretical insights come together with acute readings and strong historical research. Times Literary Supplement 2010 Richard C. Sha's fine study takes Byron's theme of 'perversion' in a different direction from the ethical, demonstrating how Romantic medical writing about the perverse influenced literary Romanticism... Fascinating book. Byron Journal 2010 Stunningly brilliant and original... a distinguished work that is well worth reading. -- Geraldine Friedman Review of English Studies 2010 Strong scholarship. -- Myron D. Yeager ANQ 2010More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Baltimore, MD
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Illustrations
14 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder
14 Halftones, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 231 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 33 mm
Weight
658 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8018-9041-3 (9780801890413)
DOI
10.1353/book.3494
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
03/2009
Johns Hopkins University Press
€45.49
Available for download
Person
Richard C. Sha is a professor of literature at American University and author of The Visual and Verbal Sketch in British Romanticism.
Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Romantic Science and the Perversification of Sexual Pleasure
2. Historicizing Perversion: Perversity, Perversion, and the Rise of Function in the Biological Sciences
3. One Sex or Two? Nervous Bodies, Romantic Puberty, and the Natural Origins of Perverse Desires
4. The Perverse Aesthetics of Romanticism: Purposiveness with Purpose
5. Fiery Joys Perverted to Ten Commands : William Blake, the Perverse Turn, and Sexual Liberation
6. Byron, Epic Puberty, and Polymorphous Perversity
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Introduction
1. Romantic Science and the Perversification of Sexual Pleasure
2. Historicizing Perversion: Perversity, Perversion, and the Rise of Function in the Biological Sciences
3. One Sex or Two? Nervous Bodies, Romantic Puberty, and the Natural Origins of Perverse Desires
4. The Perverse Aesthetics of Romanticism: Purposiveness with Purpose
5. Fiery Joys Perverted to Ten Commands : William Blake, the Perverse Turn, and Sexual Liberation
6. Byron, Epic Puberty, and Polymorphous Perversity
Notes
Works Cited
Index