"Swords in myrtle dress'd"
Subtitle: towards a rhetoric of Sodom : gay readings of homosexual politics and poetics in the eighteenth century
By: Jon Thomas Rowland.
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; Associated University Presses
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Madison [N.J.]; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 244
Subjects: English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism.; Homosexuality and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century.; Politics and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century.; English language -- 18th century -- Rhetoric.; Poetics -- History -- 18th century.; Gay men in literature.; Sex in literature.
Description: Part 1 offers readings of homosexuality in early homophobic tracts, in Grub Street productions lampooning a preferment dispute involving the bishop of London, in the London newspapers, in political pamphlets attacking Lord Hervey, and in a casebook by a clergyman defending himself against the charge of sodomizing one of his own parishioners.

Part 2 offers readings of homoeroticism in Akenside's The Pleasures of Imagination and his Odes, where homosexuality manifests itself indirectly, through elision and through Akenside's own revision of his most homoerotic passages. Finally, Part 3 returns to read homosexuality in political life, but later in the century, when the idea is exploited by Wilkes and Churchill, with some very surprising results, in their campaign against George III and his prime minister, the earl of Bute.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-240) and index.