The sodomite in fiction and satire, 1660-1750
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [191]-206) and index

Unlike much of the scholarship that has reexamined issues of gender and sexuality in the Restoration and eighteenth century, this book is not concerned with tracing the emergence of a proto-modern "homosexual" identity. In The Sodomite in Fiction and Satire, the central question is: Why did so many eighteenth-century writers represent the sodomite at all? What purposes did these representations serve?

Charting the emergence of the sodomite as a social type, Cameron McFarlane argues that the sodomite symbolized a variety of economic and political conflicts and transgressions; at the same time, the cumulative effect of these representations was to enable homoerotic desire to be articulated as it was being condemned.

McFarlane begins with an examination of several texts -- Faustina, The Tragedy of Nero, and others -- that portray the sodomite as a destructive force: foreigner, papist, tyrant, and despoiler of British masculinity. He follows with close readings of two satires; Sodom: or the Quintessence of Debauchery, and Love Letters Between a Certain Late Nobleman and the Famous Mr. Wilson. In the first, sodomy is equated with political abuse of power, while the second depicts sodomy as a "false economy of desire". McFarlane also explores the sodomite as a sexual provocateur in the works of Tobias Smollet and John Cleland.