New Logic of Sexual Violence in Enlightenment France - Rationalizing Rape

This book argues that rape as we know it was invented in the eighteenth century, examining texts as diverse as medical treatises, socio-political essays, and popular novels to demonstrate how cultural assumptions of gendered sexual desire erased rape by making a women's non-consent a logical impossibility.

List of contents

Introduction: The Rise of the Modern Self and the Erasure of Female Sexual Autonomy
Part I. Naturalizing Coquetry: The Scientific Argument for Female Sexual Duplicity
Introduction
1. Uterine Furors: Vitalist Neo-Humoralism and the Impossibility of Non-consent
2. D'Alembert's Wet Dream: The Gendered Hygiene of Nocturnal Emission
Part II. Historicizing Modesty: Female Sexuality in the State of Nature
Introduction
3. Rousseau's Natural Woman: On the Origin and Foundations of Sexual Inequality
4. Rape in Paradise: Tahiti and the (Hetero)Sexual Imperative
Part III. In the Moment: Rape, Libertinage, and the Eighteenth-Century Novel
Introduction
5. Erasing Rape in Riccoboni: The Story of Miss Jenny Montfort
6. Sexual Violence in Laclos: Consent and the Virtuous Swoon
Afterword The Enduring Legacy of an Enlightenment Narrative

About the author

Mary McAlpin is Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Summary

This book argues that rape as we know it was invented in the eighteenth century, examining texts as diverse as medical treatises, socio-political essays, and popular novels to demonstrate how cultural assumptions of gendered sexual desire erased rape by making a women’s non-consent a logical impossibility.

Product details

• Authors: Mary Mcalpin, Mary (University of Tennessee Knoxville Mcalpin, McAlpin Mary
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 08.11.2023
• EAN: 9781032255538
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3225553-8
• No. of pages: 194
• Series: Interdisciplinary Research in Gender
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Cultural Studies, France, European History, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gender Studies, Sexual abuse & harassment, Literary studies: general, Gender studies, gender groups, Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800