FRINK Linked Data Fragments server

Matches in SemOpenAlex for { <https://semopenalex.org/work/W2006479145> ?p ?o ?g. }

• W2006479145 endingPage "41" @default.
• W2006479145 startingPage "21" @default.
• W2006479145 abstract "“With drops of sperme pure white & menstruous bloud”: Sodom’s Smut and the Politics of the Prick1 Derek Shank Scholarship on Sodom has traditionally focused on matters of attribution, prompting Harold Weber to describe the play as “a text treated by the profession as a bibliographical curiosity rather than a literary artifact” (“Carolinean Sexuality” 69).2 This treatment of Sodom as a bibliographical curiosity may be symptomatic of some scholars’ unwillingness to confront the obscenity of the text itself.3 Jeremy W. Webster points out that even those who have advanced serious political readings of Sodom, including Weber and Richard Elias, have undertaken their analyses with a strategy of privileging the political over the sexual, often by sublimating sexuality into politics in a metaphorical fashion (176).4 Sodom’s graphic representations of sexuality have been sanitized by readings that understand them as subordinate to a coded political message. In this essay I examine one of the play’s salient features which scholars have mostly neglected: its graphic depictions of bodily fluids in the sexual interactions between characters, which I shall argue present a critique of some of the central tenets of Hobbes’s political philosophy in Leviathan. In a variation on the plot of the sexual decree exemplified by Fletcher’s play The Woman’s Prize; or, The Tamer Tamed, Bolloxinian’s declaration of buggery disrupts the status quo of heterosexual intercourse within matrimony, demonstrating that male sexual appetite poses a threat to the social and political order. The representation of sex as consumption, supported by the Aristotelian understanding of sperm and menstrual blood as concentrated forms of food, challenges Hobbes’s materialist notion of the individual subject and thereby supports an antagonistic view of sexual relations that exposes the disconnect between private appetite and the public good. Furthermore, this Aristotelian view of bodily fluids combined with a materialist understanding of the human being results in a view of sexual intercourse that involves bodies consuming one another and/or mixing with one another, such that the boundaries between bodies can no longer be clearly demarcated. Characters who pursue [End Page 21] pleasure through sexuality therefore encounter a threat to their corporeal integrity and their subjectivity, so the free pursuit of sexual pleasure is incompatible with Hobbes’s notion of power. By destabilizing the relationship between power and pleasure, between private appetite and the public good, Sodom’s representations of sexuality undermine the principle basis for social contract theory in Hobbes’s political philosophy. The desire for pleasure (appetite), rather than motivating a rational entrance into the social contract as in Leviathan, provokes an unceasing pursuit of sexual gratification destructive of both the individual and society. The disintegration of characters’ bodies through the uncontrolled intermingling of fluids is intertwined with the disintegration of the body politic. Sodom’s representations of bodily fluids thus present a critique of Hobbes’s political philosophy by showing that appetite is destructive, rather than formative, of the social contract. My reading of the political significance of Sodom’s sexual representations dovetails with Rachel Weil’s point that a notable feature of much of Restoration literature was how it combined representations of sexuality with its engagement with contemporary politics. According to Weil, texts such as Oldham’s Sardanapalus and the numerous obscene political satires show that “stories about royal or court sexuality were a legitimate part of political discourse, not cordoned off into a separate category” (142). Weil argues that sex was ideally suited for the representation of tyranny because it emphasized how “the location and direction of power was uncertain” (149), as evident in concerns about Charles II’s political policy being swayed by his various mistresses. Such politicized representations of sexuality are made possible by the analogy between the king’s body and the body politic (142). But this analogy could be employed to opposing political purposes: the vulnerability of the king’s body could represent the vulnerability of the nation, or its voracious sexual appetites could be construed as a threat to the public (152). Weil concludes that “[t]his equivocation about where the king’s body ended and where his kingdom, power or the bodies of his subjects began is precisely what..." @default.
• W2006479145 created "2016-06-24" @default.
• W2006479145 creator A5043818018 @default.
• W2006479145 date "2014-01-01" @default.
• W2006479145 modified "2023-10-17" @default.
• W2006479145 title "“With drops of sperme pure white & menstruous bloud”: Sodom’s Smut and the Politics of the Prick" @default.
• W2006479145 cites W1486358616 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W1560675797 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W1583664752 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W1982613743 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W1987287390 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W2000402141 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W2015732762 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W2017226612 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W2028951503 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W2045380721 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W2052495900 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W2057079610 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W2109227389 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W2168691957 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W2326455502 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W2327995759 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W2334999204 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W2503474469 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W2570798205 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W2796257746 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W3017137684 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W3046779348 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W3139350977 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W358577080 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W572961710 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W583195218 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W584254607 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W593920123 @default.
• W2006479145 cites W621914692 @default.
• W2006479145 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/rst.2014.0018" @default.
• W2006479145 hasPublicationYear "2014" @default.
• W2006479145 type Work @default.
• W2006479145 sameAs 2006479145 @default.
• W2006479145 citedByCount "2" @default.
• W2006479145 countsByYear W20064791452015 @default.
• W2006479145 countsByYear W20064791452021 @default.
• W2006479145 crossrefType "journal-article" @default.
• W2006479145 hasAuthorship W2006479145A5043818018 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConcept C104317684 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConcept C107993555 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConcept C11171543 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConcept C124952713 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConcept C142362112 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConcept C144024400 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConcept C15744967 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConcept C17744445 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConcept C185592680 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConcept C199539241 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConcept C2776562800 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConcept C2778449503 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConcept C33435437 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConcept C53813258 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConcept C55493867 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConcept C56273599 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConcept C77805123 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConcept C94625758 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConceptScore W2006479145C104317684 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConceptScore W2006479145C107993555 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConceptScore W2006479145C11171543 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConceptScore W2006479145C124952713 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConceptScore W2006479145C142362112 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConceptScore W2006479145C144024400 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConceptScore W2006479145C15744967 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConceptScore W2006479145C17744445 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConceptScore W2006479145C185592680 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConceptScore W2006479145C199539241 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConceptScore W2006479145C2776562800 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConceptScore W2006479145C2778449503 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConceptScore W2006479145C33435437 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConceptScore W2006479145C53813258 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConceptScore W2006479145C55493867 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConceptScore W2006479145C56273599 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConceptScore W2006479145C77805123 @default.
• W2006479145 hasConceptScore W2006479145C94625758 @default.
• W2006479145 hasIssue "2" @default.
• W2006479145 hasLocation W20064791451 @default.
• W2006479145 hasOpenAccess W2006479145 @default.
• W2006479145 hasPrimaryLocation W20064791451 @default.
• W2006479145 hasRelatedWork W1943088017 @default.
• W2006479145 hasRelatedWork W2001701839 @default.
• W2006479145 hasRelatedWork W2011027196 @default.
• W2006479145 hasRelatedWork W2018217768 @default.
• W2006479145 hasRelatedWork W2081069108 @default.
• W2006479145 hasRelatedWork W2742269282 @default.
• W2006479145 hasRelatedWork W3014538794 @default.
• W2006479145 hasRelatedWork W3107777110 @default.
• W2006479145 hasRelatedWork W3186754355 @default.
• W2006479145 hasRelatedWork W612141236 @default.
• W2006479145 hasVolume "38" @default.
• W2006479145 isParatext "false" @default.
• W2006479145 isRetracted "false" @default.
• W2006479145 magId "2006479145" @default.

• next