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

[executrix]

Also, my Thort yesterday was that early modern anti-theatrical writing centered around "Theater is bad, not only because citizens' wives pick up guys at the theater but, in terms of something we actually care about, men get turned on looking at boys in dresses, so euwww!"

Whereas anti-novel polemics (like the ones Austen riffed on wrt 'only a novel')were about women having their passions aroused. Although before they were important novels were usually written by women anyway, so it was women arousing passions in other women with male characters as surrogates and conduits (hi, cathexys!)