Module Information

This module examines erotic texts and images from the Romantic period. Placing these transgressive works in their contemporary late-eighteenth and early nineteenth-century contexts, as well as considering them from the perspective of modern theories of gender, sexuality, surveillance and identity, Romantic Eroticism addresses the following questions: How does Romanticism construct the 'obscene'? What is the political resonance of terms such as 'vulgar' and 'depraved' in literary reviews at this juncture? What is the relationship between erotic, medical, legal and political discourse? To what extent can 'obscene' art be considered an attack on elite culture? What is the literary value of Romantic bawdy? How do these works stand in relation to private and public spheres? How is 'pleasure' constituted by Romantic texts? How does state surveillance station itself in terms of a political erotic? Finally, we will ask how our own age draws on, and continues to process, the politics, categories and subjectivities of Romantic eroticism.

To assess and evaluate an important tradition of writing in the Romantic period, to discuss how significant Romantic challenges to established power were conducted through canonical and non-canonical erotic publications and to build on analytical and theoretical skills developed in Core modules