Victorian Fetishism

Victorian Fetishism PDF Author: Peter Melville Logan
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791477282
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Victorian Fetishism argues that fetishism was central to the development of cultural theory in the nineteenth century. From 1850 to 1900, when theories of social evolution reached their peak, European intellectuals identified all "primitive" cultures with "Primitive Fetishism," a psychological form of self-projection in which people believe everything in the external world—thunderstorms, trees, stones—is alive. Placing themselves at the opposite extreme of cultural evolution, the Victorians defined culture not by describing what culture was but by describing what it was not, and what it was not was fetishism. In analyses of major works by Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, and Edward B. Tylor, Peter Melville Logan demonstrates the paradoxical role of fetishism in Victorian cultural theory, namely, how Victorian writers projected their own assumptions about fetishism onto the realm of historical fact, thereby "fetishizing" fetishism. The book concludes by examining how fetishism became a sexual perversion as well as its place within current cultural theory.

Victorian Fetishism

Victorian Fetishism PDF Author: Peter Melville Logan
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791477282
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Victorian Fetishism argues that fetishism was central to the development of cultural theory in the nineteenth century. From 1850 to 1900, when theories of social evolution reached their peak, European intellectuals identified all "primitive" cultures with "Primitive Fetishism," a psychological form of self-projection in which people believe everything in the external world—thunderstorms, trees, stones—is alive. Placing themselves at the opposite extreme of cultural evolution, the Victorians defined culture not by describing what culture was but by describing what it was not, and what it was not was fetishism. In analyses of major works by Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, and Edward B. Tylor, Peter Melville Logan demonstrates the paradoxical role of fetishism in Victorian cultural theory, namely, how Victorian writers projected their own assumptions about fetishism onto the realm of historical fact, thereby "fetishizing" fetishism. The book concludes by examining how fetishism became a sexual perversion as well as its place within current cultural theory.

Fetish

Fetish PDF Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
ISBN: 1649372191
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
Step into a world of secret appetites, carnal longing, and dark cravings with this erotic collection set in the Victorian era. From achingly tender to utterly taboo, these ten historical stories will stir, and entice, every desire... A young wife lures men into erotic trysts—and spills all the tea to her husband at night. An heiress rekindles her friendship with a school mate who coaches her husband in the fine art of fisting. A burly builder can’t get enough of the feathery touch delivered by his level-headed bricklayer. You’re invited to a feast of these and seven more tantalizing tales. Fetish will shatter expectations, defy every convention...and awaken the lust inside you.

The Other Victorians

The Other Victorians PDF Author: Steven Marcus
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351477757
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Taking as his point of departure the authors, the audience, and the texts of Victorian writings on sex in general and of Victorian pornography in particular, Steven Marcus offers a startling and revolutionary perspective on the underside of Victorian culture. The subjects dealt with in The Other Victorians are not only those to have been "shocking" in the Victorian period. The way these subjects were regarded--and the way our notions of the Victorians continue to change, as the efforts of contemporary scholarship restore them to their full historical dimensions--are matters today of some surprise and wonder. Making use, for the first time, of the extensive collection of Victoriana at the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, Marcus first examines the writings of Dr. William Acton, who may be said to represent the "official views" of sexuality held by Victorian society, and of Henry Spencer Ashbee, the first and most important bibliographer-scholar of pornography. He then turns to the most significant work of its kind from the period, the eleven-volume anonymous autobiography My Secret Life. There follows an analysis of four pornographic Victorian novels--an analysis that throws an oblique but fascinating light on the classics of Victorian literature--and a review of the odd flood of Victorian publications devoted to flagellation. The book concludes with a chapter propounding a general theory of pornography as a sociological phenomenon. With the publication of The Other Victorians, understanding of this period took a giant stride forward. Most of the writers and writings discussed by Marcus belong to Victorian sub-literature rather than to literature proper; in this way the work remains connected to a consideration of the exotic sub-literature. A brilliantly written book in its own right, this work transformed the study of the Victorian period as did no other.

When Passion Reigned

When Passion Reigned PDF Author: Patricia Anderson
Publisher: New York : BasicBooks
ISBN:
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
In this witty and colorful book debunking the myth of Victorian prudery, Anderson argues that far from being the prudes of modern legend, the Victorians were avidly engaged in the erotic side of life. 40 illustrations.

Economies of Desire at the Victorian Fin de Siècle

Economies of Desire at the Victorian Fin de Siècle PDF Author: Jane Ford
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317576586
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This volume marks the first sustained study to interrogate how and why issues of sexuality, desire, and economic processes intersect in the literature and culture of the Victorian fin de siècle. At the end of the nineteenth-century, the move towards new models of economic thought marked the transition from a marketplace centred around the fulfilment of ‘needs’ to one ministering to anything that might, potentially, be desired. This collection considers how the literature of the period meditates on the interaction between economy and desire, doing so with particular reference to the themes of fetishism, homoeroticism, the literary marketplace, social hierarchy, and consumer culture. Drawing on theoretical and conceptual approaches including queer theory, feminist theory, and gift theory, contributors offer original analyses of work by canonical and lesser-known writers, including Oscar Wilde, A.E. Housman, Baron Corvo, Vernon Lee, Michael Field, and Lucas Malet. The collection builds on recent critical developments in fin-de-siècle literature (including major interventions in the areas of Decadence, sexuality, and gender studies) and asks, for instance, how did late nineteenth-century writing schematise the libidinal and somatic dimensions of economic exchange? How might we define the relationship between eroticism and the formal economies of literary production/performance? And what relation exists between advertising/consumer culture and (dissident) sexuality in fin-de-siecle literary discourses? This book marks an important contribution to 19th-Century and Victorian literary studies, and enhances the field of fin-de-siècle studies more generally.

Pleasure Bound: Victorian Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism

Pleasure Bound: Victorian Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism PDF Author: Deborah Lutz
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393080676
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
A smart, provocative account of the erotic current running just beneath the surface of a stuffy and stifling Victorian London. At the height of the Victorian era, a daring group of artists and thinkers defied the reigning obsession with propriety, testing the boundaries of sexual decorum in their lives and in their work. Dante Gabriel Rossetti exhumed his dead wife to pry his only copy of a manuscript of his poems from her coffin. Legendary explorer Richard Burton wrote how-to manuals on sex positions and livened up the drawing room with stories of eroticism in the Middle East. Algernon Charles Swinburne visited flagellation brothels and wrote pornography amid his poetry. By embracing and exploring the taboo, these iconoclasts produced some of the most captivating art, literature, and ideas of their day. As thought-provoking as it is electric, Pleasure Bound unearths the desires of the men and women who challenged buttoned-up Victorian mores to promote erotic freedom. These bohemians formed two loosely overlapping societies—the Cannibal Club and the Aesthetes—to explore their fascinations with sexual taboo, from homosexuality to the eroticization of death. Known as much for their flamboyant personal lives as for their controversial masterpieces, they created a scandal-provoking counterculture that paved the way for such later figures as Gustav Klimt, Virginia Woolf, and Jean Genet. In this stunning exposé of the Victorian London we thought we knew, Deborah Lutz takes us beyond the eyebrow-raising practices of these sex rebels, revealing how they uncovered troubles that ran beneath the surface of the larger social fabric: the struggle for women’s emancipation, the dissolution of formal religions, and the pressing need for new forms of sexual expression.

Fetish

Fetish PDF Author: Valerie Steele
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Clothing and dress
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Kinky boots, corsets, underwear as outerwear, second-skin garments of rubber and leather, uniforms, body piercing.... Today everything from a fetishist's dream appears on the fashion runways. Although some people regard fetish fashion as exploitative and misogynistic, others interpret it as a positive Amazonian statement--couture Catwoman. But the connection between fashion and fetishism goes far beyond a few couture collections. For the past thirty years, the iconography of sexual fetishism has been increasingly assimilated into popular culture. Before Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman, there was Mrs. Peel, heroine of the 1960s television show "The Avengers," who wore a black leather catsuit modeled on a real fetish costume. Street styles like punk and the gay "leatherman" look also testify to the influence of fetishism. The concept of fetishism has recently assumed a growing importance in critical thinking about the cultural construction of sexuality. Yet until now no scholar with an in-depth knowledge of fashion history has studied the actual clothing fetishes themselves. Nor has there been a serious exploration of the historical relationship between fashion and fetishism, although erotic styles have changed significantly and "sexual chic" has become increasingly conspicuous. Cultural historian Valerie Steele has devoted much of her career to the study of the relationship between clothing and sexuality, and is uniquely qualified to write this book. Marshalling a dazzling array of evidence from pornography, psychology, and history, as well as interviews with individuals involved in sexual fetishism, sadomasochism, and cross-dressing, Steele illuminates the complex relationship between appearance and identity. Based on years of research, her book Fetish: Fashion, Sex & Power explains how a paradigm shift in attitudes toward sex and gender has given rise to the phenomenon of fetish fashion. "Steele is to fetish dressing what Anne Rice is to vampires," writes Christa Worthington of Elle magazine, "the intellectual interpreter of...wishes beyond our ken." According to Steele, fetishism shows how human sexuality is never just a matter of doing what comes naturally; fantasy always plays an important role. Steele provides provocative answers to such questions as: Why is black regarded as the sexiest color? Is fetishizing the norm for males? Does fetish fashion reflect a fear of AIDS? And why do so many people love shoes?

Hemingway's Fetishism

Hemingway's Fetishism PDF Author: Carl P. Eby
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791440032
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Demonstrates in painstaking detail and with reference to stunning new archival evidence how fetishism was crucial to the construction and negotiation of identity and gender in Hemingway's life and fiction.

Sexuality in Victorian Fiction

Sexuality in Victorian Fiction PDF Author: Dennis W. Allen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780806125831
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
The author examines four Victorian novels: Pride and Prejudice, Cranford, Bleak House, and Picture of Dorian Gray. He shows these stories should be seen less as attempts to repress sex and sexuality than as efforts to produce, construct, and control the sexual. The author argues that the sexual was perceived by the Victorians as chaotic, anarchic, and resistant to rational categorization and was seen as a threat to ordered dichotomies such as nature/culture, savage/civilized, and private/public. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Love in the Time of Victoria

Love in the Time of Victoria PDF Author: Françoise Barret-Ducrocq
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9780860913252
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 876

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Book Description
There has been a great deal written on the secret longings and sexual hypocrisy of the Victorian era's upper crust, but almost nothing has chronicled the erotic desires and sexuality of London's working class. Now, in this painstakingly researched book, their touching and emotional stories can be told.