The pen[is] mightier: textual sex
Jan. 17th, 2008 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseFound a passage when researching The Monk that I thought was rather applicable to the current OTW imbroglio: on the sexualized imagery of plagiarism and conventionality in Gothic Lit. (I've enjoyed working on the Gothic due to that very conventionality - in some way it functions very similarly to fannish tropes.) Deals with homosexuality, "penetration" and muse sex.
"...Just as relevant as gender to understanding the construction of authorship is sexuality.[10] Though masculine authors have a deeply homosocial relation to each other and their works, they are themselves, as Howard argues, usually constructed as “heterosexual.” In older models of poetic inspiration, for example, the author “mates” with a feminine muse (Howard 476). But by the mid-eighteenth century, the heterosexualized process of literary production was cast in oddly mono-sexual terms, with a phallic genius so potent that a single (male) parent could produce offspring on his own. As Young writes, perhaps drawing on the classical association of genius with the phallus (Rosenthal 19), “An Original rises spontaneously from the vital root of Genius” (12). A number of factors contributed to this transformation. Mark Rose and Martha Woodmansee maintain that possessive individualism merged with the new valuation of originality to form a conception of literary production that required a solitary author. Subsequent work on authorship suggests that this economic account fails to capture all of the subtleties of this history (see Randall 65, 77-9). Marie-Hélène Huet, for example, offers the intriguing possibility that changes in the aesthetics of imagination were influenced by shifts in theories of biological reproduction. One such shift involved the development of “parental singularity, the idea that only one parent is essentially responsible for procreation” (41); another included conferring upon the male author the mother’s imaginative ability to produce a monstrously unique creature bearing no relation to its parents, vividly realized in Victor Frankenstein’s singly-parented monster (160-1).[11]
7
Throwing into relief the heterosexuality of the originary author’s parental singularity are the simultaneous reconceptions of the sexuality of the imitator and plagiarist. As Marilyn Randall shows in her cogent history of textual appropriation, Pragmatic Plagiarism, at least since Roman authors began to translate Greek texts, imitation was often figured as a form of conquest (189-92). Laura Rosenthal points out that Dryden saw his own textual appropriations in line with this tradition, “as a masculine, often sexual act” (44). Plagiarism, which was considered a form of imitation (albeit illegitimate) through much of the eighteenth century (Randall 67; Terry 194-6), was seen as a variation on this theme of sexual conquest, informing the Western tradition of equating plagiarism with a violation of sexual territory (Howard 482-3). As Randall points out, Martial, the Roman author who coined the term, “compares the plagiarist to the philandering, or perhaps cuckolded, husband” (62), an image which Defoe seems to have pressed into service when he complained that invading the literary properties of authors was “every jot as unjust as lying with their Wives, and breaking up their houses” (qtd. in Rose 40).
8
By the mid-eighteenth century, imitation was an increasingly devalued textual practice. In contrast to the organic and natural processes of genius, it was regarded as mechanical, manufactured, and, at least to some extent, sterile. In turn, the manly conquest of plagiarism was on its way to being seen as form of homosexual rape, comparable to more recent representations (Howard 484). Significantly, this is also the period when English homosexual subcultures were becoming visible (if only as objects of attack) (Crompton xiv) and gender difference was beginning to be codified (Haggerty, Men in Love 172). Just as interesting, language used to condemn both of these sexual and textual practices was provocatively similar. For instance, fops—who, as George Haggerty and others have argued, were not so much “homosexual” figures as “sexually confused gender misfits” (45)—were considered to offer only “imitation[s]” and “artificial” versions of the “natural Behavior” of a “true gentleman” or to reproduce each other, “displaying a Sameness [. . .] in all their Words and Actions” (qtd. in Rosenthal 198, 199). Rosenthal’s examination of Colley Cibber as the notorious plagiarist-fop and veritable “cultural symbol for compromised authorship” further suggests ways in which these imitative practices were seen as analogous (190). And just as imitation and plagiarism were increasingly understood to be contrary to the “natural” mode of generating of original works, so too was sodomy considered the “Murder of the very Essence of Procreation” (qtd. in Crompton 451-2)."
Author : Lauren Fitzgerald
Title : The Sexuality of Authorship in The Monk
Journal : Romanticism on the Net
Issues : 36-37, November 2004-February 2005. « Queer Romanticism »
URI : http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2004/v/n36-37/011138ar.html
The anxieties about homosexual rape and plagiarism intrigue me, especially after all that's been said on fandom as Queen Female Space.
"...Just as relevant as gender to understanding the construction of authorship is sexuality.[10] Though masculine authors have a deeply homosocial relation to each other and their works, they are themselves, as Howard argues, usually constructed as “heterosexual.” In older models of poetic inspiration, for example, the author “mates” with a feminine muse (Howard 476). But by the mid-eighteenth century, the heterosexualized process of literary production was cast in oddly mono-sexual terms, with a phallic genius so potent that a single (male) parent could produce offspring on his own. As Young writes, perhaps drawing on the classical association of genius with the phallus (Rosenthal 19), “An Original rises spontaneously from the vital root of Genius” (12). A number of factors contributed to this transformation. Mark Rose and Martha Woodmansee maintain that possessive individualism merged with the new valuation of originality to form a conception of literary production that required a solitary author. Subsequent work on authorship suggests that this economic account fails to capture all of the subtleties of this history (see Randall 65, 77-9). Marie-Hélène Huet, for example, offers the intriguing possibility that changes in the aesthetics of imagination were influenced by shifts in theories of biological reproduction. One such shift involved the development of “parental singularity, the idea that only one parent is essentially responsible for procreation” (41); another included conferring upon the male author the mother’s imaginative ability to produce a monstrously unique creature bearing no relation to its parents, vividly realized in Victor Frankenstein’s singly-parented monster (160-1).[11]
7
Throwing into relief the heterosexuality of the originary author’s parental singularity are the simultaneous reconceptions of the sexuality of the imitator and plagiarist. As Marilyn Randall shows in her cogent history of textual appropriation, Pragmatic Plagiarism, at least since Roman authors began to translate Greek texts, imitation was often figured as a form of conquest (189-92). Laura Rosenthal points out that Dryden saw his own textual appropriations in line with this tradition, “as a masculine, often sexual act” (44). Plagiarism, which was considered a form of imitation (albeit illegitimate) through much of the eighteenth century (Randall 67; Terry 194-6), was seen as a variation on this theme of sexual conquest, informing the Western tradition of equating plagiarism with a violation of sexual territory (Howard 482-3). As Randall points out, Martial, the Roman author who coined the term, “compares the plagiarist to the philandering, or perhaps cuckolded, husband” (62), an image which Defoe seems to have pressed into service when he complained that invading the literary properties of authors was “every jot as unjust as lying with their Wives, and breaking up their houses” (qtd. in Rose 40).
8
By the mid-eighteenth century, imitation was an increasingly devalued textual practice. In contrast to the organic and natural processes of genius, it was regarded as mechanical, manufactured, and, at least to some extent, sterile. In turn, the manly conquest of plagiarism was on its way to being seen as form of homosexual rape, comparable to more recent representations (Howard 484). Significantly, this is also the period when English homosexual subcultures were becoming visible (if only as objects of attack) (Crompton xiv) and gender difference was beginning to be codified (Haggerty, Men in Love 172). Just as interesting, language used to condemn both of these sexual and textual practices was provocatively similar. For instance, fops—who, as George Haggerty and others have argued, were not so much “homosexual” figures as “sexually confused gender misfits” (45)—were considered to offer only “imitation[s]” and “artificial” versions of the “natural Behavior” of a “true gentleman” or to reproduce each other, “displaying a Sameness [. . .] in all their Words and Actions” (qtd. in Rosenthal 198, 199). Rosenthal’s examination of Colley Cibber as the notorious plagiarist-fop and veritable “cultural symbol for compromised authorship” further suggests ways in which these imitative practices were seen as analogous (190). And just as imitation and plagiarism were increasingly understood to be contrary to the “natural” mode of generating of original works, so too was sodomy considered the “Murder of the very Essence of Procreation” (qtd. in Crompton 451-2)."
Author : Lauren Fitzgerald
Title : The Sexuality of Authorship in The Monk
Journal : Romanticism on the Net
Issues : 36-37, November 2004-February 2005. « Queer Romanticism »
URI : http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2004/v/n36-37/011138ar.html
The anxieties about homosexual rape and plagiarism intrigue me, especially after all that's been said on fandom as Queen Female Space.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-18 10:30 pm (UTC)I need a superhero costume. Clearly. *loves you too*