Victorian Discourses on Sexuality and Religion

by John Maynard

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521115339
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/02/2009
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: the subject somewhat broadly conceived; 2. From Cloister to 'Great Sinful Streets': Arthur Hugh Clough and the Victorian 'Question of Sex'; 3. Sexual Christianity: Charles Kingsley's Via Media; 4. Known and unknown desire: Coventry Patmore's search for eros; 5. Conclusion: Hardy's Jude: disassembling sexuality and religion.