Full Product Details
Author: Declan Kavanagh
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Imprint: Bucknell University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.80cm
, Height: 2.60cm
, Length: 23.70cm
Weight: 0.572kg
ISBN: 9781611488241
ISBN 10: 1611488249
Pages: 268
Publication Date: 23 June 2017
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.
Reviews
Kavanagh (Univ. of Kent, UK) presents an investigation into the twilight world of gender/sex-fluid men-referred to as, among other monikers, sodomites, catamites, and mollies-during Britain's Georgian period. Kavanagh's critical examination of the works of Charles Churchill, Edmund Burke, John Wilkes, and others illuminates the role effeminacy played in shaping discourse of the day. Kavanagh's embedded thesis is that fluid identity and outre sexual practices of this period challenged the era's sensibilities and set the precedent for current efforts to broaden gender and sexual categorizations. In this regard, Kavanagh's book complements extant research on the subject. Kavanagh's obvious authority on the subject matter qualifies him for inclusion among the field's most credible scholars.... [T]he book's value to English history, literary studies, and gender and sexuality studies stands unquestioned. Summing Up: Essential. Researchers and faculty. * CHOICE * Effeminate Years is a wonderful book. Beautifully written and engaging throughout, at times its wittiness is absolutely dazzling; but still the argument is rigorous and really compelling throughout. This is a book for anyone interested in gender and sexuality in the eighteenth century or in queer studies more generally. In an age of ever-richer political satire, moreover, this book offers a special treat for readers. -- George Haggerty Effeminate Years explores how ideal versions of masculinity become imbricated in idealised versions of nationality and ethnicity. Specifically, this book reveals how discourses of effeminacy and idealised masculinity structure the formation of English, Irish and Scots ethnic identities in the years when the project of the British Empire was emerging from infancy. The mid' years of the Eighteenth Century saw the final defeat of Gaelic Jacobite hopes and the consolidation of an ascendant English Protestant nationalism which segued into British colonialism. Effeminate Years provides a remarkably comprehensive, deft and very entertaining account of the culture wars of these important years to demonstrate how the cultural productions of the era manifest anxiety, opportunism and counter-strategy about what kind of man should and would lead the development of Britain and expansion of empire. -- Katherine O'Donnell, University College Dublin
Effeminate Years is a wonderful book. Beautifully written and engaging throughout, at times its wittiness is absolutely dazzling; but still the argument is rigorous and really compelling throughout. This is a book for anyone interested in gender and sexuality in the eighteenth century or in queer studies more generally. In an age of ever-richer political satire, moreover, this book offers a special treat for readers.â -- George Haggerty
Author Information
Declan Kavanagh is lecturer in eighteenth-century studies and director of the Centre for Gender, Sexuality, and Writing at the University of Kent.
