Politeness, Self-Mastery, and the Shameful Sodomite: Disciplining Masculinity and Sexual Practice in Eighteenth-Century Britain
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2019
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of History
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en
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Abstract
This thesis sets out with the aim of making an intervention in the study of gender and
sexuality in the eighteenth century by centering shame in the construction of polite masculinity
and sodomy in eighteenth-century Britain. Utilizing key insights from Habermas’ idea of the
‘public sphere,’ and theories of gender and sexuality by Randolph Trumbach, this paper proposes
that the figure of the fop and the sodomite, together, became shameful models in their lack of
proper masculinity and ‘excess’ of vice. Through this analysis, this paper highlights how
eighteenth-century emphasis on manners, politeness, and Protestant morality, and pubic virtue
facilitated the renegotiation of the divide between the public and the private as to deny the
‘sodomite’ right to privacy. Finally, this thesis aims to emphasize the disciplinary society that
was evolving via discourses of morality and self-mastery, shame, and eventually, public
punishments of the sodomite.