Perverse Romanticism: Aesthetics and Sexuality in Britain, 1750-1832

by Richard C. Sha

Overview

Richard C. Sha’s revealing study considers how science shaped notions of sexuality, reproduction, and gender in the Romantic period.

Through careful and imaginative readings of various scientific texts, the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Longinus, and the works of such writers as William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Lord Byron, Sha explores the influence of contemporary aesthetics and biology on literary Romanticism.

Revealing that ideas of sexuality during the Romantic era were much more fluid and undecided than they are often characterized in the existing scholarship, Sha’s innovative study complicates received claims concerning the shift from perversity to perversion in the nineteenth century. He observes that the questions of perversity—or purposelessness—became simultaneously critical in Kantian aesthetics, biological functionalism, and Romantic ideas of private and public sexuality. The Romantics, then, sought to reconceptualize sexual pleasure as deriving from mutuality rather than from the biological purpose of reproduction.

At the nexus of Kantian aesthetics, literary analysis, and the history of medicine, Perverse Romanticism makes an important contribution to the study of sexuality in the long eighteenth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421402611
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	01/12/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	376
File size:	5 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Richard C. Sha is a professor of literature at American University and author of The Visual and Verbal Sketch in British Romanticism.

Richard C. Sha is a professor of literature at American University, where he is a member of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience. He is the author of Perverse Romanticism: Aesthetics and Sexuality in Britain, 1750–1832 and the coeditor of Romanticism and the Emotions.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Romantic Science and the Perversification of Sexual Pleasure
2. Historicizing Perversion: Perversity, Perversion, and the Rise of Function in the Biological Sciences
3. One Sex or Two? Nervous Bodies, Romantic Puberty, and the Natural Origins of Perverse Desires
4. The Perverse Aesthetics of Romanticism: Purposiveness with Purpose
5. Fiery Joys Perverted to Ten Commands : William Blake, the Perverse Turn, and Sexual Liberation
6. Byron, Epic Puberty, and Polymorphous Perversity
Notes
Works Cited
Index

What People are Saying About This

George E. Haggerty

With breathtaking scholarship, solid erudition, and distinctively clear prose, Richard Sha shows us the place of perversity in Romantic aesthetics. He links aesthetics and sexuality by showing how 'resistance to function can be the basis of a meaningful critique of society.' By linking these previously binarily opposed terms, Sha is able to embrace the perverse and show us how it becomes a central motivating force behind Romantic thought. As a result Romanticism is reimagined here, as Sha says, 'from the ground up.' This is a groundbreaking study that will change our understanding of the major Romantic writers and the field of Romanticism itself.

— George E. Haggerty, University of California, Riverside

Frederick Burwick

Sha addresses the ways in which Romantic literature advocated purposelessness in both aesthetics and sexual pleasure: art for art's sake and sex for the sake of sex. His analysis is original and insightful.

— Frederick Burwick, University of California, Los Angeles

From the Publisher

With breathtaking scholarship, solid erudition, and distinctively clear prose, Richard Sha shows us the place of perversity in Romantic aesthetics. He links aesthetics and sexuality by showing how 'resistance to function can be the basis of a meaningful critique of society.' By linking these previously binarily opposed terms, Sha is able to embrace the perverse and show us how it becomes a central motivating force behind Romantic thought. As a result Romanticism is reimagined here, as Sha says, 'from the ground up.' This is a groundbreaking study that will change our understanding of the major Romantic writers and the field of Romanticism itself.
—George E. Haggerty, University of California, Riverside

Sha addresses the ways in which Romantic literature advocated purposelessness in both aesthetics and sexual pleasure: art for art's sake and sex for the sake of sex. His analysis is original and insightful.
—Frederick Burwick, University of California, Los Angeles

Editorial Reviews

An impressive display of Sha’s masterful grasp of a wide range of scholarly literature, and a provocative thesis that will be of interest to academics in all three fields.
—Katie Gray, H-Net Reviews

Sha brings to these topics a keen intelligence buttressed by up-to-the-minute scholarship . . . He dazzles by the quantity and breadth of his reading and embodies the best interdisciplinary approaches so many scholars tout but rarely incorporate.
—George Rousseau, Social History of Medicine

His theoretical insights come together with acute readings and strong historical research.
—Times Literary Supplement

Richard C. Sha's fine study takes Byron's theme of 'perversion' in a different direction from the ethical, demonstrating how Romantic medical writing about the perverse influenced literary Romanticism. . . . Fascinating book.
—Byron Journal

Stunningly brilliant and original . . . a distinguished work that is well worth reading.
—Geraldine Friedman, Review of English Studies

Strong scholarship.
—Myron D. Yeager, ANQ

An engaging study.
—Declan W. Kavanagh, BARS Bulletin and Review

Sha's work . . . with its rich and engaging cultural context, significantly broadens and deepens our understanding of Romantic-era sexuality.
—Rick Incorvati, Keats-Shelley Journal

Sha's scholarship on behalf of perversion is formidable, and makes for fun reading.
—Paul Youngquist, European Romantic Review

From the Publisher

Sha brings to these topics a keen intelligence buttressed by up-to-the-minute scholarship . . . He dazzles by the quantity and breadth of his reading and embodies the best interdisciplinary approaches so many scholars tout but rarely incorporate.

Social History of Medicine - George Rousseau

Stunningly brilliant and original . . . a distinguished work that is well worth reading.

Review of English Studies - Geraldine Friedman

Sha's work . . . with its rich and engaging cultural context, significantly broadens and deepens our understanding of Romantic-era sexuality.

Keats-Shelley Journal - Rick Incorvati

Strong scholarship.

ANQ - Myron D. Yeager

Richard C. Sha's fine study takes Byron's theme of 'perversion' in a different direction from the ethical, demonstrating how Romantic medical writing about the perverse influenced literary Romanticism. . . . Fascinating book.

Byron Journal

An engaging study.

BARS Bulletin and Review - Declan W. Kavanagh

An impressive display of Sha’s masterful grasp of a wide range of scholarly literature, and a provocative thesis that will be of interest to academics in all three fields.

H-Net Reviews - Katie Gray

Sha's scholarship on behalf of perversion is formidable, and makes for fun reading.

European Romantic Review - Paul Youngquist

His theoretical insights come together with acute readings and strong historical research.

Times Literary Supplement

Sha's scholarship on behalf of perversion is formidable, and makes for fun reading.

— Paul Youngquist

European Romantic Review

Sha's work... with its rich and engaging cultural context, significantly broadens and deepens our understanding of Romantic-era sexuality.

— Rick Incorvati

Keats-Shelley Journal

An engaging study.

— Declan W. Kavanagh

BARS Bulletin and Review

Strong scholarship.

— Myron D. Yeager

ANQ

Stunningly brilliant and original... a distinguished work that is well worth reading.

— Geraldine Friedman

Review of English Studies

Sha brings to these topics a keen intelligence buttressed by up-to-the-minute scholarship... He dazzles by the quantity and breadth of his reading and embodies the best interdisciplinary approaches so many scholars tout but rarely incorporate.

— George Rousseau

Social History of Medicine

An impressive display of Sha’s masterful grasp of a wide range of scholarly literature, and a provocative thesis that will be of interest to academics in all three fields.

— Katie Gray

H-Net Reviews