Synopses & Reviews
Charting the construction of sexual perversions in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century medical, psychiatric and psychological discourse, Schaffner argues that sexologists' preoccupation with these perversions was a response to specifically modern concerns, and illuminates the role of literary texts in the formation of sexological knowledge.
About the Author
ANNA KATHARINA SCHAFFNERteaches Comparative Literature and is Co-Director of the Centre for Modern European Literature at the University of Kent, UK. Her publications include a monograph on avant-garde poetry entitled Sprachzerlegung in historischer Avantgardelyrik und konkreter Poesie (2007) and articles on Dada, David Lynch, Franz Kafka, Frank Schulz, Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Thomas Mann.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I: THE PERVERSIONS IN SEXOLOGY
The Birth of a Science: From Masturbation Theory to Krafft-Ebing
The French Scene: Degeneration Theory and the Invention of Fetishism
Sexology in England: Ellis, Carpenter and Lawrence
The Golden Age of Sexology in Germany: Activism, Institutionalization and the Anthropological Turn
Freud, Literature and the Perversification of Mankind
PART II: THE PERVERSIONS IN MODERNIST LITERATURE
Homosexuality: Thomas Mann and the Degenerate Sublime
Anal Sex: D.H. Lawrence and the Back Door to Transcendence
Sadism: Marcel Proust and the Banality of Evil
Masochism: Franz Kafka and the Eroticization of Suffering
Fetishism: Georges Bataille and Sexual-Textual Transgression
Conclusion
Bibliography