Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash: Piracy, Sexuality, and Masculine Identity

by Hans Turley

Overview

An examination into the homoerotic and other transgressive aspects of the pirate's world

Despite, or perhaps because of, our lack of actual knowledge about pirates, an immense architecture of cultural mythology has arisen around them. Three hundred years of novels, plays, painting, and movies have etched into the popular imagination contradictory images of the pirate as both arch-criminal and anti-hero par excellence. How did the pirate-a real threat to mercantilism and trade in early-modern Britain-become the hypermasculine anti-hero familiar to us through a variety of pop culture outlets? How did the pirate's world, marked as it was by sexual and economic transgression, come to capture our collective imagination?

In Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, Hans Turley delves deep into the archives to examine the homoerotic and other culturally transgressive aspects of the pirate's world and our prurient fascination with it. Turley fastens his eye on historical documents, trial records, and the confessions of pirates, as well as literary works such as Robinson Crusoe, to track the birth and development of the pirate image and to show its implications for changing notions of self, masculinity, and sexuality in the modern era.

Turley's wide-ranging analysis provides a new kind of history of both piracy and desire, articulating the meaning of the pirate's contradictory image to literary, cultural, and historical studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814782248
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	06/01/2001
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.51(d)

About the Author

Hans Turley was Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut.

Table of Contents

	Preface	vii
	Introduction: A Merry Life and a Short One	1
1	Life on Board an Early-Eighteenth-Century Ship	10
2	Hostis Humani Generis: The Common Enemy against All Mankind	28
3	Trial Records, Last Words, and Other Ephemera: The Literary Artifacts of Piracy	44
4	Captain Avery and the Making of an Antihero	62
5	Fabricated by the Frail Hand of Man: The General History and Fictional Reality	73
6	A Brave, a Just, an Innocent, and a Noble Cause	92
7	Solemn Imprecations and Curses: Captain Singleton's Search for Identity	109
8	Robinson Crusoe and "True Christian" Identity	128
	Notes	159
	Bibliography	179
	Index	195
	About the Author	199

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A splendid account of piracy as a historical and cultural production of emerging modern culture. Hans Turley shows the ways in which sodomy and piracy are inextricable from the cultural imagination of the eighteenth century and, in doing so, encourages us to rethink not only pirate history, but the history of sexuality as well."

-George E. Haggerty,University of California, Riverside

"No simplifying on my part will do justice to Turley's exhaustive readings and display of complex ideas."

-Left History 8.1,

"Turley presents a thoroughly-researched literay and cultural history of the transgressive pirate figure in the early eighteenth-century."

-Journal of Folklore Research

Editorial Reviews

"Turley presents a thoroughly-researched literay and cultural history of the transgressive pirate figure in the early eighteenth-century."

Journal of Folklore Research

"A splendid account of piracy as a historical and cultural production of emerging modern culture. Hans Turley shows the ways in which sodomy and piracy are inextricable from the cultural imagination of the eighteenth century and, in doing so, encourages us to rethink not only pirate history, but the history of sexuality as well."

George E. Haggerty

Turley (English, U. of Connecticut at Storrs) offers homoerotic readings of several works attributed to Daniel Defoe, including (1724), (1720), and (1720). He includes many intriguing details of pirate life gleaned from historical sources and from other 18th-century literature. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknew.com)

Booknews

"No simplifying on my part will do justice to Turley's exhaustive readings and display of complex ideas."

Left History 8.1

"No simplifying on my part will do justice to Turley's exhaustive readings and display of complex ideas.”

-Left History 8.1

"Turley presents a thoroughly-researched literay and cultural history of the transgressive pirate figure in the early eighteenth-century."

-Journal of Folklore Research

"A splendid account of piracy as a historical and cultural production of emerging modern culture. Hans Turley shows the ways in which sodomy and piracy are inextricable from the cultural imagination of the eighteenth century and, in doing so, encourages us to rethink not only pirate history, but the history of sexuality as well."

-George E. Haggerty,University of California, Riverside

From the Publisher