Victorian Discourses on Sexuality and Religion (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780521115339)

John Maynard's original and provocative study looks at sexuality and religion as creations of language, in the literary and cultural discourses of Victorian England. After a wide-ranging introduction (drawing on myth, anthropology, comparative religion and the history of sexuality) Maynard goes on to articulate and interpret the strikingly complex and varied ways in which the earnest sceptic Arthur Hugh Clough, the Protestant Charles Kingsley, and the Catholic convert Coventry Patmore placed the relation of sexuality and religion at the centre of their work. A final chapter on Jude the Obscure demonstrates Thomas Hardy's deconstruction of the endeavour to make sense of sexuality and religion, fragmenting this inherited discourse into mere words and bodily parts, in a disintegration of the great constructive vision of his predecessors.

Author: John Maynard
ISBN-10: 0521115337
ISBN-13: 9780521115339
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 07/02/2009
Pages: 424
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.24lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.86d