Sexual Restraint and Aesthetic Experience in Victorian Literary Decadence

By:

Sarah Green

Format:

Hardback

Series:

Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

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Description

Can sexual restraint be good for you? Many Victorians thought so. This book explores the surprisingly positive construction of sexual restraint in an unlikely place: late nineteenth-century Decadence. Reading Decadent texts alongside Victorian writing about sexual health, including medical literature, adverts, advice books, and periodical articles, it identifies an intellectual Paterian tradition of sensuous continence, in which 'healthy' pleasure is distinguished from its 'harmful' counterpart. Recent work on Decadent sexuality concentrates on transgression and subversion, with restraint interpreted ahistorically as evidence of repression/sublimation or queer coding. Here Sarah Green examines the work of Walter Pater, Lionel Johnson, Vernon Lee, and George Moore to outline a co-extensive alternative approach to sexuality where restraint figured as a productive part of the 'aesthetic life', or a practical ethics shaped by aesthetic principles. Attending to this tradition reveals neglected connections within and beyond Decadence, bringing fresh perspective to its late nineteenth- and twentieth-century reception.

Release date NZ

March 9th, 2023

Author

Sarah Green

Audience

Tertiary Education (US: College)

Illustrations

Worked examples or Exercises

Pages

274

Series

Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

Dimensions

155x235x20

ISBN-13

9781108831512

Product ID

35965925

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