English Fiction & Prose Literature - General & Miscellaneous - Literary Criticism, Literary Criticism - General & Miscellaneous, Gay & Lesbian Literary Studies, Poetic Theory, English Fiction & Prose Literature - 18th Century - Literary Criticism, Rhetori

Swords in Myrtle Dress'd

Name: Swords in Myrtle Dress'd
Author: Jon Thomas Rowland
ISBN: 9780838637609

by Jon Thomas Rowland

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Overview

Part 1 offers readings of homosexuality in early homophobic tracts, in Grub Street productions lampooning a preferment dispute involving the bishop of London, in the London newspapers, in political pamphlets attacking Lord Hervey, and in a casebook by a clergyman defending himself against the charge of sodomizing one of his own parishioners. Part 2 offers readings of homoeroticism in Akenside's The Pleasures of Imagination and his Odes, where homosexuality manifests itself indirectly, through elision and through Akenside's own revision of his most homoerotic passages. Finally, Part 3 returns to read homosexuality in political life, but later in the century, when the idea is exploited by Wilkes and Churchill, with some very surprising results, in their campaign against George III and his prime minister, the earl of Bute.