Developments in the Histories of Sexualities

Developments in the Histories of Sexualities: In Search of the Normal,1600-1800 explores the oppositions created by the official exclusion of banned sexual practices and the resistance to that exclusion through widespread acceptance of those outlawed practices at an interpersonal level. At different times and in different places, state legislation sets upor tries to set upa normal by rejecting a particular practice or group of practices. Yet this normal is derogated by popular practice, since the banned acts themselves are thought at the grassroots level to be normal. Among the events discussed in these essays are the Woods-Pirie trial, the Ladies of Llangollen, the popular acceptance of fops and mollies, and the press reaction to the discovery that James Allen was a woman who had lived successfully as a man and Lavinia Edwards was a man who had made her living as a female prostitute. Developments in the History of Sexualities analyzes both the state language of bans and fiats about sexuality, and the grassroots language which marks the acceptance of multiplicity in sexual practice. Contributors benefit from the accumulation of new evidence of attitudes towards sexual practice, and they engage with a wide range of texts, including Ned Wards History of the Clubs, Tobias Smolletts Roderick Random, Shakespeares Taming of the Shrew and The Tempest, Drydens All for Love, Anne Batten Cristalls Poetical Sketches, Isaac de Benserades Iphis et Iante, and Alessandro Verris Le Avventure di Saffo.