more extensive and unaffected pleasure

[lotesse]

Why, when discussing eighteenth-nineteenth(twentieth-)century anti-novel rhetoric, does no one address the discursive parallels with injunctions against onanism/masturbation? (and does anyone know of a book that does? because I would totally read that book.)

Comments

[lotesse]

YES. God, it's clearly been too long, that one had fallen out of my head. But it's such a widespread trope, one that's been written on so much - how can that essay still be controversial?! it is to boggle.

[executrix]

Yeah, but a lot of people with control over funding don't think that students should ever be exposed to any mention of sexuality other than post-marital procreationi.

And don't forget Rev. Mr. Podsnap's concern about reading that might "bring a blush to the cheek of a young person" and Trollope's boast that he did not think any girl had lost any of her purity by reading his books--I mean, if you ask yourself just what they were worried about.

[lotesse]

Right?! and bloody bugger funding, anyway.