Ros Ballaster
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184775
- eISBN:
- 9780191674341
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184775.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
Historicist and feminist accounts of the ‘rise of the novel’ have neglected the phenomenon of the professional woman writer in England prior to the advent of the sentimental novel in the 1740s. This ...
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Historicist and feminist accounts of the ‘rise of the novel’ have neglected the phenomenon of the professional woman writer in England prior to the advent of the sentimental novel in the 1740s. This book explores the means by which the three leading Tory women novelists of the late 17th and early 18th centuries challenged and reworked both contemporary gender ideologies and generic convention. The seduction plot provided Aphra Behn, Delarivier Manley, and Eliza Haywood with a vehicle for dramatizing their own appropriation of the ‘masculine’ power of fiction-making. Seduction is employed in these fictions as a metaphor for both novelistic production (the seduction of the reader by the writer) and party political machination (the seduction of the public by the politician). The book also explores the debts early prose fiction owed to French 17th-century models of fiction-writing and argues that Behn, Manley, and Haywood succeed in producing a distinctively ‘English’ and female ‘form’ for the amatory novel.Less
Historicist and feminist accounts of the ‘rise of the novel’ have neglected the phenomenon of the professional woman writer in England prior to the advent of the sentimental novel in the 1740s. This book explores the means by which the three leading Tory women novelists of the late 17th and early 18th centuries challenged and reworked both contemporary gender ideologies and generic convention. The seduction plot provided Aphra Behn, Delarivier Manley, and Eliza Haywood with a vehicle for dramatizing their own appropriation of the ‘masculine’ power of fiction-making. Seduction is employed in these fictions as a metaphor for both novelistic production (the seduction of the reader by the writer) and party political machination (the seduction of the public by the politician). The book also explores the debts early prose fiction owed to French 17th-century models of fiction-writing and argues that Behn, Manley, and Haywood succeed in producing a distinctively ‘English’ and female ‘form’ for the amatory novel.
David. Cressy
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198207818
- eISBN:
- 9780191677809
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198207818.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History, Cultural History
This chapter tells the story told by an unmarried servant to a Leicestershire magistrate in 1608. Its ingredients include power and dependency, sex and violence, attempted abortion, attempted murder, ...
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This chapter tells the story told by an unmarried servant to a Leicestershire magistrate in 1608. Its ingredients include power and dependency, sex and violence, attempted abortion, attempted murder, suspected infanticide, and the construction of an exculpatory narrative. The story exposes the relationships of gentility and dependency, coercive male mastery and the vulnerabilities of female domestic service. Other topics exposed in the course of its unfolding include subterfuge and resistance, bribery and forgery, the misuse of literacy, and the threatened misuse of the law. The story even has religious dimensions involving the swearing of oaths, invocation of the Devil, recourse to the Bible, and a popular misrepresentation of the doctrine of predestination. The central character, Rose Arnold of Scraptoft, Leicestershire, told her story to her mother, to her minister, and to a magistrate, before retelling it, after much rehearsal, to the clerks of the diocesan court.Less
This chapter tells the story told by an unmarried servant to a Leicestershire magistrate in 1608. Its ingredients include power and dependency, sex and violence, attempted abortion, attempted murder, suspected infanticide, and the construction of an exculpatory narrative. The story exposes the relationships of gentility and dependency, coercive male mastery and the vulnerabilities of female domestic service. Other topics exposed in the course of its unfolding include subterfuge and resistance, bribery and forgery, the misuse of literacy, and the threatened misuse of the law. The story even has religious dimensions involving the swearing of oaths, invocation of the Devil, recourse to the Bible, and a popular misrepresentation of the doctrine of predestination. The central character, Rose Arnold of Scraptoft, Leicestershire, told her story to her mother, to her minister, and to a magistrate, before retelling it, after much rehearsal, to the clerks of the diocesan court.
Lawrence Stone
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198202530
- eISBN:
- 9780191675386
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198202530.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This chapter presents a case study on forced marriage by a seducer or suitor, focusing on the court case Houghton v. Cash which was filed in 1703. The case involved James Cash who allegedly seduced ...
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This chapter presents a case study on forced marriage by a seducer or suitor, focusing on the court case Houghton v. Cash which was filed in 1703. The case involved James Cash who allegedly seduced his domestic servant Ellen, made her pregnant, and asked her to attribute the paternity of her child to bachelor blacksmith Thomas Houghton. The court ruled in favour of Houghton having proved that the ascription of paternity to him was the result of an ingenious seduction plot planned by Cash and carried out by Ellen.Less
This chapter presents a case study on forced marriage by a seducer or suitor, focusing on the court case Houghton v. Cash which was filed in 1703. The case involved James Cash who allegedly seduced his domestic servant Ellen, made her pregnant, and asked her to attribute the paternity of her child to bachelor blacksmith Thomas Houghton. The court ruled in favour of Houghton having proved that the ascription of paternity to him was the result of an ingenious seduction plot planned by Cash and carried out by Ellen.
Joanna L. Grossman and Lawrence M. Friedman
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691149820
- eISBN:
- 9781400839773
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691149820.003.0005
- Subject:
- Law, Family Law
This chapter considers the decline and fall of a group of closely related causes of action: breach of promise of marriage, alienation of affections, criminal conversation, and perhaps even civil and ...
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This chapter considers the decline and fall of a group of closely related causes of action: breach of promise of marriage, alienation of affections, criminal conversation, and perhaps even civil and criminal actions for “seduction.” The story here is tangled and complex; no one factor explains why these causes of action lost ground. But they are connected with the social meaning of marriage, and very notably, with one striking twentieth-century development: the sexual revolution—specifically, the end of the idea that only married people were entitled, legitimately, to have sexual intercourse. These causes of action lived in the shadow of traditional marriage, and depended for their validity on traditional marriage. As it declined, they too receded into history, although not entirely.Less
This chapter considers the decline and fall of a group of closely related causes of action: breach of promise of marriage, alienation of affections, criminal conversation, and perhaps even civil and criminal actions for “seduction.” The story here is tangled and complex; no one factor explains why these causes of action lost ground. But they are connected with the social meaning of marriage, and very notably, with one striking twentieth-century development: the sexual revolution—specifically, the end of the idea that only married people were entitled, legitimately, to have sexual intercourse. These causes of action lived in the shadow of traditional marriage, and depended for their validity on traditional marriage. As it declined, they too receded into history, although not entirely.
Berys Gaut
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199263219
- eISBN:
- 9780191718854
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199263219.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter completes the cognitive argument for ethicism by defending the aesthetic claim. It develops the componential and the critical vocabulary arguments in support of the claim. It also ...
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This chapter completes the cognitive argument for ethicism by defending the aesthetic claim. It develops the componential and the critical vocabulary arguments in support of the claim. It also answers autonomist objections due to Stolnitz, Lamarque, and Diffey, and contextualist objections due to Kieran. It then discusses several artistic techniques, such as the use of imagery and the creation of complex characters, and artistic strategies, such as the ethical journey and seduction strategies, which artworks employ to teach us morally and to do so in a way that makes their moral teaching an aesthetic merit in them. The chapter concludes with a detailed discussion of Nabokov's Lolita to illustrate these techniques and strategies in action.Less
This chapter completes the cognitive argument for ethicism by defending the aesthetic claim. It develops the componential and the critical vocabulary arguments in support of the claim. It also answers autonomist objections due to Stolnitz, Lamarque, and Diffey, and contextualist objections due to Kieran. It then discusses several artistic techniques, such as the use of imagery and the creation of complex characters, and artistic strategies, such as the ethical journey and seduction strategies, which artworks employ to teach us morally and to do so in a way that makes their moral teaching an aesthetic merit in them. The chapter concludes with a detailed discussion of Nabokov's Lolita to illustrate these techniques and strategies in action.
Elliott Antokoletz
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195365825
- eISBN:
- 9780199868865
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195365825.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, Opera
This chapter looks at Act III, Scene I — one of the towers of the castle — and examines the idea of Mélisande's hair as object of manifold symbolic significance, the seduction of Pelléas in the magic ...
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This chapter looks at Act III, Scene I — one of the towers of the castle — and examines the idea of Mélisande's hair as object of manifold symbolic significance, the seduction of Pelléas in the magic of the night, and the threatening arrival of Golaud. Intervallic expansion serves as basis for dramatic tension and change of mood. This scene also expresses passion and sensuality in terms of diatonic and chromatic saturation, and represents Golaud and fate by the whole-tone-1 collection. The chapter also explores dramatic parallels and polarities. Increasing passion and impending fate are represented by chromatic (octatonic) compression of the whole-tone set by common tritone projections. This scene reveals the emergence of Pelléas, then Golaud. in the darkness, while Mélisande's dilemma is symbolized by heightened dramatic polarity and complex pitch-set interactions. Finally, Act III, Scene 2, the vaults of the castle; Scene 3, a terrace at the entrance of the vaults, dark and light; and Scene 4, before the castle, are examined. These all develop Golaud's expression of jealousy; based on a primary manifestation of the whole-tone cycles and their cells. The chapter further addresses the principle of polarity.Less
This chapter looks at Act III, Scene I — one of the towers of the castle — and examines the idea of Mélisande's hair as object of manifold symbolic significance, the seduction of Pelléas in the magic of the night, and the threatening arrival of Golaud. Intervallic expansion serves as basis for dramatic tension and change of mood. This scene also expresses passion and sensuality in terms of diatonic and chromatic saturation, and represents Golaud and fate by the whole-tone-1 collection. The chapter also explores dramatic parallels and polarities. Increasing passion and impending fate are represented by chromatic (octatonic) compression of the whole-tone set by common tritone projections. This scene reveals the emergence of Pelléas, then Golaud. in the darkness, while Mélisande's dilemma is symbolized by heightened dramatic polarity and complex pitch-set interactions. Finally, Act III, Scene 2, the vaults of the castle; Scene 3, a terrace at the entrance of the vaults, dark and light; and Scene 4, before the castle, are examined. These all develop Golaud's expression of jealousy; based on a primary manifestation of the whole-tone cycles and their cells. The chapter further addresses the principle of polarity.
Roger W. Shuy
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195181661
- eISBN:
- 9780199788477
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195181661.003.0003
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics
Following Foucault and R. Lakoff, power is defined and differentiated from persuasion. The approach used here is more like that of Sornig — manipulative seduction — especially since these strategies ...
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Following Foucault and R. Lakoff, power is defined and differentiated from persuasion. The approach used here is more like that of Sornig — manipulative seduction — especially since these strategies are used to influence the understandings of people other than the persons to whom they are addressed (juries), and they focus on a time period that is not the same as the time frame in which they were spoken. Powerful speakers depend on their power not being recognized. With the exception of language in the courtroom itself, most of the research on language power is focused on a speaker’s lack of power. In contrast, this study shows the opposite — the actual power held by certain speakers in the undercover context.Less
Following Foucault and R. Lakoff, power is defined and differentiated from persuasion. The approach used here is more like that of Sornig — manipulative seduction — especially since these strategies are used to influence the understandings of people other than the persons to whom they are addressed (juries), and they focus on a time period that is not the same as the time frame in which they were spoken. Powerful speakers depend on their power not being recognized. With the exception of language in the courtroom itself, most of the research on language power is focused on a speaker’s lack of power. In contrast, this study shows the opposite — the actual power held by certain speakers in the undercover context.
David P. Wright
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195304756
- eISBN:
- 9780199866830
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195304756.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
This chapter (through Chapter 12) begins the second part of the book, which discusses the compositional logic of the Covenant Code—how the Laws of Hammurabi and other sources were altered and revised ...
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This chapter (through Chapter 12) begins the second part of the book, which discusses the compositional logic of the Covenant Code—how the Laws of Hammurabi and other sources were altered and revised to create the Covenant Code. Chapter 5 provides a detailed analysis of the debt-slave laws (Exodus 21:2–11) and the law about seducing an unbetrothed maiden (Exodus 22:15–16). It shows that almost every law in 21:2–11 is based on a stimulus in Hammurabi's text. It also explains how the Covenant Code used the logic of the seduction law to create or support the law about a daughter becoming the wife of her father's creditor to pay off a debt.Less
This chapter (through Chapter 12) begins the second part of the book, which discusses the compositional logic of the Covenant Code—how the Laws of Hammurabi and other sources were altered and revised to create the Covenant Code. Chapter 5 provides a detailed analysis of the debt-slave laws (Exodus 21:2–11) and the law about seducing an unbetrothed maiden (Exodus 22:15–16). It shows that almost every law in 21:2–11 is based on a stimulus in Hammurabi's text. It also explains how the Covenant Code used the logic of the seduction law to create or support the law about a daughter becoming the wife of her father's creditor to pay off a debt.
Keith Gandal
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195338911
- eISBN:
- 9780199867127
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195338911.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter discusses methodology and places the book in the context of related scholarship on the subject. In particular, it takes issue with literary scholarship whose approach is based on a ...
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This chapter discusses methodology and places the book in the context of related scholarship on the subject. In particular, it takes issue with literary scholarship whose approach is based on a history of ideas or discourses and thus eschews attention to authors' biographies, or experiences of authors — and thus ultimately ignores historical experiences.(It addresses Walter Michaels' Our America, which is an influential example of such scholarship that addresses modernist novels and their relationship to 1920s nativism.) The chapter also argues with studies of the relationship between modernist style and politics that give attention to stylistics per se, apart from plot and character. It discusses the common plot that unifies the 1920s novels at issue, discusses why critics have missed this plot, and offers an alternative argument about modernist style in the context of modernist plots and characters, as well as the historical context of the mobilization. In so doing, it traces the deconstruction of the sentimental novel of seduction by Progressive Era realist writers and the rise of the modernist, racist promiscuity plot, which the three 1920s novels at issue here share with each other, and with Djuna Barnes' Nightwood and Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust.Less
This chapter discusses methodology and places the book in the context of related scholarship on the subject. In particular, it takes issue with literary scholarship whose approach is based on a history of ideas or discourses and thus eschews attention to authors' biographies, or experiences of authors — and thus ultimately ignores historical experiences.(It addresses Walter Michaels' Our America, which is an influential example of such scholarship that addresses modernist novels and their relationship to 1920s nativism.) The chapter also argues with studies of the relationship between modernist style and politics that give attention to stylistics per se, apart from plot and character. It discusses the common plot that unifies the 1920s novels at issue, discusses why critics have missed this plot, and offers an alternative argument about modernist style in the context of modernist plots and characters, as well as the historical context of the mobilization. In so doing, it traces the deconstruction of the sentimental novel of seduction by Progressive Era realist writers and the rise of the modernist, racist promiscuity plot, which the three 1920s novels at issue here share with each other, and with Djuna Barnes' Nightwood and Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust.
Lesel Dawson
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199266128
- eISBN:
- 9780191708688
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199266128.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter offers an introduction to medical ideas about lovesickness and the ways in which these are represented in literature. It is divided into three sections. The first section details the ...
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This chapter offers an introduction to medical ideas about lovesickness and the ways in which these are represented in literature. It is divided into three sections. The first section details the physiological construction of lovesickness, cataloguing its origins, symptoms, and cures, and suggesting how the four aetiologies of lovesickness offer different ways of conceptualizing desire and its bodily impact. This is followed by a consideration of historical accounts of individuals experiencing the disease in diaries, letters, and doctors' case notes. The final section examines the self-fashioning of the melancholy lover; it details the social and intellectual connotations of lovesick display and analyses the disease's psychic and seductive functions. Lovesickness is shown to be an effective tool in courtship, providing an important means of expression desire and of engineering its fulfilment.Less
This chapter offers an introduction to medical ideas about lovesickness and the ways in which these are represented in literature. It is divided into three sections. The first section details the physiological construction of lovesickness, cataloguing its origins, symptoms, and cures, and suggesting how the four aetiologies of lovesickness offer different ways of conceptualizing desire and its bodily impact. This is followed by a consideration of historical accounts of individuals experiencing the disease in diaries, letters, and doctors' case notes. The final section examines the self-fashioning of the melancholy lover; it details the social and intellectual connotations of lovesick display and analyses the disease's psychic and seductive functions. Lovesickness is shown to be an effective tool in courtship, providing an important means of expression desire and of engineering its fulfilment.
Ned Schantz
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195335910
- eISBN:
- 9780199868902
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195335910.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, Women's Literature
With attention to major incarnations of the British novel, this chapter positions gossip as the central, disavowed source of interest in novelistic discourse. Reading Emma and The Portrait of a Lady ...
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With attention to major incarnations of the British novel, this chapter positions gossip as the central, disavowed source of interest in novelistic discourse. Reading Emma and The Portrait of a Lady closely, it tracks the seduction of the reader into gendered habits of scapegoating and sadism that characterize gossip at its worst. To counteract these dynamics, the chapter mobilizes untapped textual resources toward a more generous feminist mode of gossip, and thereby challenges conventional assumptions about character and plot from the status of Mrs. Elton to the fate of Isabel Archer.Less
With attention to major incarnations of the British novel, this chapter positions gossip as the central, disavowed source of interest in novelistic discourse. Reading Emma and The Portrait of a Lady closely, it tracks the seduction of the reader into gendered habits of scapegoating and sadism that characterize gossip at its worst. To counteract these dynamics, the chapter mobilizes untapped textual resources toward a more generous feminist mode of gossip, and thereby challenges conventional assumptions about character and plot from the status of Mrs. Elton to the fate of Isabel Archer.
Catherine Belsey
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748633012
- eISBN:
- 9780748652235
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748633012.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
The chapters in this book put theory to work in order to register Shakespeare's powers of seduction, together with his moment in history. Teasing out the meanings of the narrative poems, as well as ...
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The chapters in this book put theory to work in order to register Shakespeare's powers of seduction, together with his moment in history. Teasing out the meanings of the narrative poems, as well as some of the more familiar plays, the book demonstrates the possibilities of an attention to textuality that also draws on the archive. A reading of the Sonnets, written specially for the book, analyses their intricate and ambivalent inscription of desire. Between them, these chapters trace the progress of theory in the course of three decades, while a new introduction offers a narrative and analytical overview, from a participant's perspective, of some of its key implications. The book shows how texts can offer access to the dissonances of the past when theory finds an outcome in practice. It provides a demonstration of poststructuralist theory at work.Less
The chapters in this book put theory to work in order to register Shakespeare's powers of seduction, together with his moment in history. Teasing out the meanings of the narrative poems, as well as some of the more familiar plays, the book demonstrates the possibilities of an attention to textuality that also draws on the archive. A reading of the Sonnets, written specially for the book, analyses their intricate and ambivalent inscription of desire. Between them, these chapters trace the progress of theory in the course of three decades, while a new introduction offers a narrative and analytical overview, from a participant's perspective, of some of its key implications. The book shows how texts can offer access to the dissonances of the past when theory finds an outcome in practice. It provides a demonstration of poststructuralist theory at work.
Thomas L. Brodie
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195138368
- eISBN:
- 9780199834037
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195138368.003.0033
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
The next two episodes form a contrast, a form of antithetic parallelism. The seduction of Dinah leaves Jacob motionless and weak (Genesis 34); but then he embarks on a journey that, despite the ...
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The next two episodes form a contrast, a form of antithetic parallelism. The seduction of Dinah leaves Jacob motionless and weak (Genesis 34); but then he embarks on a journey that, despite the presence of death, shows energy and strength (35:1–20). Many complementarities are contrasts. For instance, God is completely absent in the first episode, but central to the second. The first begins with seduction (some say rape), the second with purification. Part of the interplay between the episodes concerns the relationship of love and death. The overall picture, reminiscent of the call of Abraham, is of a remarkable transition from paralysis to life.Less
The next two episodes form a contrast, a form of antithetic parallelism. The seduction of Dinah leaves Jacob motionless and weak (Genesis 34); but then he embarks on a journey that, despite the presence of death, shows energy and strength (35:1–20). Many complementarities are contrasts. For instance, God is completely absent in the first episode, but central to the second. The first begins with seduction (some say rape), the second with purification. Part of the interplay between the episodes concerns the relationship of love and death. The overall picture, reminiscent of the call of Abraham, is of a remarkable transition from paralysis to life.
Thomas L. Brodie
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195138368
- eISBN:
- 9780199834037
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195138368.003.0036
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
The account of Joseph's early experience in Egypt falls easily into two complementary chapters: his resistance to seduction, leading to his imprisonment (Genesis 39); and his interpretation of ...
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The account of Joseph's early experience in Egypt falls easily into two complementary chapters: his resistance to seduction, leading to his imprisonment (Genesis 39); and his interpretation of dreams, leaving him still in prison, forgotten (Genesis 40). Joseph emerges as close to God, with integrity and prophetic wisdom.Less
The account of Joseph's early experience in Egypt falls easily into two complementary chapters: his resistance to seduction, leading to his imprisonment (Genesis 39); and his interpretation of dreams, leaving him still in prison, forgotten (Genesis 40). Joseph emerges as close to God, with integrity and prophetic wisdom.
David Cressy
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198207818
- eISBN:
- 9780191677809
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198207818.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History, Cultural History
This book examines how the orderly, Protestant, and hierarchical society of post-Reformation England coped with the cultural challenges posed by beliefs and events outside the social norm. It uses a ...
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This book examines how the orderly, Protestant, and hierarchical society of post-Reformation England coped with the cultural challenges posed by beliefs and events outside the social norm. It uses a series of linked stories and close readings of local texts and narratives to investigate unorthodox happenings such as bestiality and monstrous births, seduction and abortion, excommunication and irregular burial, nakedness and cross-dressing. Each story, and the reaction it generated, exposes the strains and stresses of its local time and circumstances. The reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I were witness to endless religious disputes, tussles for power within the aristocracy, and arguments galore about the behaviour and beliefs of common people. Questions raised by ‘unnatural’ episodes were debated throughout society at local and national levels, and engaged the attention of the magistrates, the bishops, the crown, and the court. The resolution of such questions was not taken lightly in a world in which God and the devil still fought for people's souls.Less
This book examines how the orderly, Protestant, and hierarchical society of post-Reformation England coped with the cultural challenges posed by beliefs and events outside the social norm. It uses a series of linked stories and close readings of local texts and narratives to investigate unorthodox happenings such as bestiality and monstrous births, seduction and abortion, excommunication and irregular burial, nakedness and cross-dressing. Each story, and the reaction it generated, exposes the strains and stresses of its local time and circumstances. The reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I were witness to endless religious disputes, tussles for power within the aristocracy, and arguments galore about the behaviour and beliefs of common people. Questions raised by ‘unnatural’ episodes were debated throughout society at local and national levels, and engaged the attention of the magistrates, the bishops, the crown, and the court. The resolution of such questions was not taken lightly in a world in which God and the devil still fought for people's souls.
Toni Bowers
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199592135
- eISBN:
- 9780191725340
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199592135.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter considers the genealogy of seduction stories prior to the late seventeenth century, demonstrating that female sexual agency emerges early as a peculiarly complex and generative problem. ...
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This chapter considers the genealogy of seduction stories prior to the late seventeenth century, demonstrating that female sexual agency emerges early as a peculiarly complex and generative problem. The late seventeenth-century emergence of the terms “whig,” “tory,” and “jacobite”—as both partisan labels and descriptors of ideological sensibilities—is considered, along with various connotations and points of inadequacy within those terms. The chapter concludes by arguing that seduction topoi resonated with special power for “new tory” subjects struggling to reconcile ideological principles with irresistible practices of complicity and collusion.Less
This chapter considers the genealogy of seduction stories prior to the late seventeenth century, demonstrating that female sexual agency emerges early as a peculiarly complex and generative problem. The late seventeenth-century emergence of the terms “whig,” “tory,” and “jacobite”—as both partisan labels and descriptors of ideological sensibilities—is considered, along with various connotations and points of inadequacy within those terms. The chapter concludes by arguing that seduction topoi resonated with special power for “new tory” subjects struggling to reconcile ideological principles with irresistible practices of complicity and collusion.
Toni Bowers
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199592135
- eISBN:
- 9780191725340
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199592135.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
Delarivier Manley's fictional narratives dramatize and valorize new‐tory principles in their deployment of seduction topoi. The New Atalantis (1709), Manley's most famous roman à clef and the ...
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Delarivier Manley's fictional narratives dramatize and valorize new‐tory principles in their deployment of seduction topoi. The New Atalantis (1709), Manley's most famous roman à clef and the centerpiece of this chapter, uses ad hominem satire to attack individual Whig partisans and general whig principles, and does so through a series of scenes representing relations of “collusive resistance” within “force or fraud.” Close readings of key interpolated seduction tales from Atalantis demonstrate the importance of the seventeenth‐century topoi inherited by (and transformed in) eighteenth‐century seduction stories to new‐tory self‐justifications. In Manley's work in particular, these inherited topoi also contribute directly to the construction of a viable Tory partisan identity in the first decades of the eighteenth century.Less
Delarivier Manley's fictional narratives dramatize and valorize new‐tory principles in their deployment of seduction topoi. The New Atalantis (1709), Manley's most famous roman à clef and the centerpiece of this chapter, uses ad hominem satire to attack individual Whig partisans and general whig principles, and does so through a series of scenes representing relations of “collusive resistance” within “force or fraud.” Close readings of key interpolated seduction tales from Atalantis demonstrate the importance of the seventeenth‐century topoi inherited by (and transformed in) eighteenth‐century seduction stories to new‐tory self‐justifications. In Manley's work in particular, these inherited topoi also contribute directly to the construction of a viable Tory partisan identity in the first decades of the eighteenth century.
Ad Putter
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198182535
- eISBN:
- 9780191673825
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182535.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter examines the similarity between the temptation scenes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and in Chretien de Troyes' Perlesvaus. It suggests that the temptations in both works took the ...
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This chapter examines the similarity between the temptation scenes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and in Chretien de Troyes' Perlesvaus. It suggests that the temptations in both works took the similar form of an invitation to become the ‘Sir Gawain’ about whom their seductresses have obviously heard so much. It attempts to explain where the ladies who tempted to seduce Gawain learned about the knight's reputation as a womanizer.Less
This chapter examines the similarity between the temptation scenes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and in Chretien de Troyes' Perlesvaus. It suggests that the temptations in both works took the similar form of an invitation to become the ‘Sir Gawain’ about whom their seductresses have obviously heard so much. It attempts to explain where the ladies who tempted to seduce Gawain learned about the knight's reputation as a womanizer.
Ros Ballaster
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184775
- eISBN:
- 9780191674341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184775.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter surveys and evaluates 20th-century accounts of the late 17th- and 18th-century novel, arguing for a more sophisticated analysis of the role of the sexual fantasy and party-political ...
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This chapter surveys and evaluates 20th-century accounts of the late 17th- and 18th-century novel, arguing for a more sophisticated analysis of the role of the sexual fantasy and party-political metaphor in the literature of seduction. The predominance of realist teleologies in historic studies of the rise of the novel has obscured the continuing appeal of fantasy and non-realist forms (traditionally associated with romance and feminine literary consumption) for writers of early prose fiction.Less
This chapter surveys and evaluates 20th-century accounts of the late 17th- and 18th-century novel, arguing for a more sophisticated analysis of the role of the sexual fantasy and party-political metaphor in the literature of seduction. The predominance of realist teleologies in historic studies of the rise of the novel has obscured the continuing appeal of fantasy and non-realist forms (traditionally associated with romance and feminine literary consumption) for writers of early prose fiction.
Tanya Pollard
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199270835
- eISBN:
- 9780191710322
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199270835.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter examines how depictions of poisonous cosmetics express early modern anxieties about the dangerous powers of seductive spectacles, with an emphasis on the theater. Understood in the early ...
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This chapter examines how depictions of poisonous cosmetics express early modern anxieties about the dangerous powers of seductive spectacles, with an emphasis on the theater. Understood in the early modern period as medicinal or restorative for women, cosmetics, based on substances such as mercury and arsenic, betrayed expectations by proving corrosive and harmful to their wearers. Taking as its starting point a fatal face-painting scene in The Devil’s Charter by Barnabe Barnes, the chapter explores representations of poisonous face-paints in plays, anti-cosmetic treatises, medical writings, and anti-theatrical diatribes. It goes on to demonstrate how this association worked to identify the theater as a seductive poison. Ultimately, it shows that the depictions of women suffering from poisonous face-paint offer a disturbingly literal image of the vulnerability of the body to the invasive force of spectacle.Less
This chapter examines how depictions of poisonous cosmetics express early modern anxieties about the dangerous powers of seductive spectacles, with an emphasis on the theater. Understood in the early modern period as medicinal or restorative for women, cosmetics, based on substances such as mercury and arsenic, betrayed expectations by proving corrosive and harmful to their wearers. Taking as its starting point a fatal face-painting scene in The Devil’s Charter by Barnabe Barnes, the chapter explores representations of poisonous face-paints in plays, anti-cosmetic treatises, medical writings, and anti-theatrical diatribes. It goes on to demonstrate how this association worked to identify the theater as a seductive poison. Ultimately, it shows that the depictions of women suffering from poisonous face-paint offer a disturbingly literal image of the vulnerability of the body to the invasive force of spectacle.
