INQ-271 | Scandalous Fiction

Full Title: Scandalous Fiction and Criminal Conversation

Topic Description:

From the public city streets to the private domestic sphere, eighteenth-century authors were obsessed with how notions of “criminality” intersected with the changing ideas of gender and sexuality and its textual representation. As the title of this course suggests, we will explore the complex intersection of gendered identity, criminality, and sexuality during the long eighteenth century through texts that were considered “scandalous.” We will investigate a wide variety of texts, both canonical and non-canonical, that are distinctly concerned with this intersection. How was criminality understood at the time? What part did language and narrative play in this understanding? How were gender and sexuality discussed and what was their place in notions of criminality? How did various authors and forms attend to this intersection? By grappling with these and many other questions an image emerges, at times licentious at others decorous, that helped produce a discourse on gender and sexuality still resonant today.

Counts as Global? No

Topic Approved: February 2023