Title: Sexing the text
Description: "A contribution to the study of the history of sexuality, this book examines the emergence of a new kind of heterosexual rhetoric in the early eighteenth century, a rhetoric that ultimately displaced earlier and more diverse expressions of sexuality and the body.

Drawing on traditional scholarly methods as well as recent queer-theoretical perspectives, the book traces the rise of the modern paradigm of compulsory heterosexuality, and counters certain feminist assumptions about the nature of "masculinity" and "male character" during the period.

Throughout, Parker offers readings of a variety of texts, including the fiercely homophobic pamphlet Onania; or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution, Jonathan Swift's political satires on William Wood and Richard Tighe, Alexander Pope's poems To Cobham and To a Lady, Eliza Haywood's romance novel Philidore and Placentia, and John Cleland's pornographic novel Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects: Body, Human, in literature, English language, English literature, Femininity in literature, History and criticism, Masculinity in literature, Rhetoric, Sex differences (Psychology) in literature, Sex differences in literature, Sex in literature, Sex role in literature, Human body in literature, Sex, Sex Work, Masturbation, Gender Identity, Literature, History
Places: Great Britain
Time periods: 18th century