Sculptural Body in Victorian Literature: Encrypted Sexualities

The book explores Victorian writers' erotic investment in statues, theorizes the function of the sculptural body in Victorian poetry and prose, and offers thorough readings of sculpture in Victorian texts and contexts. It extends the British focus to encompass nineteenth-century European and American writings and argues that transgressive desires that cannot be openly acknowledged are often buried and encrypted in the marble bodies of statues.

Format: Hardback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 30 November 2020
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Victorian writers' erotic investment in statues is explored in this book, which also theorises the function of the sculptural body in Victorian poetry and prose. It offers thorough readings of sculpture in Victorian texts and contexts, examining a wide range of works by well-known and lesser-known writers of the period, such as Thomas Hardy, John Ruskin, Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, Vernon Lee, Olive Custance, Arthur O Shaughnessy, and others. The book extends the British focus to encompass nineteenth-century European and American writings, arguing that transgressive desires that cannot be openly acknowledged are often buried and encrypted in the marble bodies of statues. Examining sculpture's ubiquity in Victorian galleries and museums, Pulham observes that while touch is prohibited in these cultural locations, Victorian texts offer safe spaces where sculptures may be kissed or caressed using metaphors of tactility that work at the intersections of touch and vision and permit the recovery of forbidden love.

Weight: 522g
Dimension: 162 x 240 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780748693429