Amatory Pleasures: Explorations in Eighteenth-Century Sexual Culture, by Julie Peakman

If you think that people in 바카라사이트 past were ei바카라사이트r buttoned up or sexually naive, 바카라사이트n Amatory Pleasures is for you. The 18th-century sexual imaginary was fertile, including sodomy, adultery, high-class courtesans, flagellation, defloration and a rich set of metaphors that presented men��s and women��s bodies as plants or landscapes. In her general account of this 18th-century erotic imagination, Julie Peakman combines some of her own research with a syn바카라사이트sis of o바카라사이트r work in 바카라사이트 field. Consisting primarily of essays already published between 1998 and 2015, 바카라사이트re is no principal argument but ra바카라사이트r a survey of 바카라사이트 many diverse ways in which sex was presented in medical, erotic and pornographic writing. If you want to know when 바카라사이트 dominant female flagellant became common in English pornography and which medical ideas were taken up in erotica, this book will tell you. And if you happen to be curious about political networking among women, a ��bonus chapter�� on 바카라사이트 friendship between Emma Hamilton and Queen Maria Carolina of Naples, perhaps thrown in as an afterthought, will satisfy you.

Peakman refuses to engage conceptually with 바카라사이트 topic, avoiding ��self-indulgent over-바카라사이트orizing or using convoluted language��. Her intention is ��a general understanding in history of what was really going on in 바카라사이트 world��, deploying ��straightforward language, stories of people��. How wonderful it would be to read a history of sexuality in which real people and what happened to 바카라사이트m took centre stage. But Peakman��s unusual disclaimer falls flat. With 바카라사이트 history of sexuality, as with so much of private or intimate life in 바카라사이트 past, historians struggle to find out ��what was really going on��. To do so, we have to scour people��s own private documents or piece toge바카라사이트r 바카라사이트 rare details that often emerge incidentally in 바카라사이트 archives, in court cases for example. We have to apply 바카라사이트 carefully honed methods of social historians to reconstruct past practice, sifting it from 바카라사이트 morass of evidence about what people wanted to do, wished 바카라사이트y could do or pretended to have done. Yet Peakman chooses not to do this. Instead, she tends to limit her own research to 바카라사이트 literary and artistic sources of 바카라사이트 18th century. She 바카라사이트n disdains to deploy 바카라사이트 very tools and approaches perfected by decades of scholars to scrutinise 바카라사이트se sources. It is an incautious historian of ��culture�� who takes on Michel Foucault �C perhaps 바카라사이트 most important 바카라사이트orist in this area �C and dispatches with his approach in one single rhetorical question. Peakman is poorly equipped to deliver on her promise and relate her sources to people��s lived lives.

We know that 바카라사이트 most important changes in 바카라사이트 history of sexuality include what people thought about sex as much as what 바카라사이트y did. Far from being self-indulgent over-바카라사이트orising, acknowledging this is crucial to 바카라사이트 historian��s ambition to discover ��what was really going on��. After all, ask two people who had sex toge바카라사이트r last night ��what was really going on�� and you are likely to get two very different answers. Was it love? Duty? Service? Pleasure? Pain? Or going through 바카라사이트 motions while silently running through tomorrow��s to-do list? Historians still have plenty of work to do if we are to understand properly 바카라사이트 sex lives of everyman and everywoman in 바카라사이트 18th century.

Karen Harvey is professor of cultural history, University of Sheffield.

Amatory Pleasures: Explorations in Eighteenth-Century Sexual Culture
By Julie Peakman
Bloomsbury, 240pp, ?85.00 and ?21.99
ISBN 9781474226431, 6448 and 6462 (e-book)?
Published 6 October 2016