The sexual behavior of people in any given society or subculture is guided by certain codes of conduct: written or unwritten rules on how to behave. Cupid on a Leash researches the different codes... Show moreThe sexual behavior of people in any given society or subculture is guided by certain codes of conduct: written or unwritten rules on how to behave. Cupid on a Leash researches the different codes of conduct that guided sexuality in Italy between c. 1450 and 1550. It identifies which codes were present for people of different genders, ages, social classes and sexual orientations. Moreover, the book examines how broadly these codes were shared within the source material, and analyzes the roots and rationalizations of their existence. A wide variety of sources, written by male as well as female authors, is used to analyze these sexual codes of conduct. These sources range from romance epics, novellas, and treatises on love, to sermons, anatomical treatises, and personal correspondence. By revealing the many, often contradictory codes of conduct guiding sexuality, Cupid on a Leash provides insight into the complexities of societal expectations in Renaissance Italy. It studies the arguments that people used to defend sexual codes of conduct, and analyzes the logic behind these arguments, seeking to explain why they were considered so important. Show less
In Savage Embraces: James Purdy, Melodrama, and the Narration of Identity, Looi van Kessel explores the ways in which the early works of the American author James Purdy undermine the notion of a... Show moreIn Savage Embraces: James Purdy, Melodrama, and the Narration of Identity, Looi van Kessel explores the ways in which the early works of the American author James Purdy undermine the notion of a stable and true identity. Writing in the 1950s and 60s, a time in which identity politics enjoyed increased purchase in the United States, Purdy imagines characters who feel the urge to act out their sexual desires without having to conform to oppressive identity categories. In so doing, Purdy is searching for a language that shows how identity is produced through narration. To tease out this language, Looi approaches Purdy’s writing through the mode of melodrama—a mode that focuses on the aesthetic dramatization of tensions in the plot—while also bringing his work in conversation with current queer thinking. Ultimately, this dissertation attempts to bring the disparate fields of narrative theory and queer theory in a meaningful relation with one another. Show less
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000}span.s1 {font-kerning: none}James Purdy’s novel Eustace Chisholm and the... Show morep.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000}span.s1 {font-kerning: none}James Purdy’s novel Eustace Chisholm and the Works (1967) challenges the notion that sexuality is part of an identity that is interior to one’s self. Central to this argument is a brief scene from the novel in which the sexual identity of one of the characters, Amos Ratcliffe, is narrated as an Oedipal fantasy of patricide and incest. Read through the lens of melodrama this article suggests that the novel, and this scene in particular, exposes sexual identity as an exteriority that is projected onto a person by his or her environment. This constitution of sexual identity is enforced through the confession, which is central to both the psychoanalytic Oedipal scenario and melodrama. Melodrama, however, problematizes the psychoanalytic confession to an interior truth that is subsequently assumed as sexual identity, for it foregrounds the exteriority onto which the truth-claim of the confession is based. As such, reading Eustace Chisholm through the lens of melodrama opens up a way to think about sexuality without taking recourse to identity. Show less
