Sodomy and English gothicism: The implications of “Melmoth the Wanderer”, “The Monk”, and “De Monfort”
Abstract
The present study considers how the crises of identity enacted in and by discussions of sodomy influenced the depictions and experiences of Gothic “horror” in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England. The period in question was tumultuous with regard to sexual, political, and religious questions. Given its fluidity of meaning and its status as an “unspeakable” act, sodomy posed persistent difficulties in the negotiation of such questions. However, by eliciting the condemnations and resistances of discussants, sodomy also served as an important means of raising and displacing problems of self-integrity. The present study examines the strategies for broaching sodomy as a topic of discourse and suggests that these strategies shaped the debates surrounding Gothic literature. Works such as Melmoth the Wanderer, The Monk, and De Monfort expressed the rhetorical-conceptual incoherencies of sodomy by transforming them into elements of their narrative structures. At the same time, these works encouraged audiences to identify “complicity” as a potential outcome of aesthetic experience and allowed audiences to rehearse proofs of their own non-complicity.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Friedman, Purdue University.
Subject Area
British and Irish literature
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