Introduction

  • Heike Bauer
Chapter
Part of the Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture book series (PNWC)

Abstract

English Literary Sexology explores how sexology — the sustained theorisation of sex — emerged and how it was transmitted across linguistic and disciplinary boundaries between the 1860s and the 1930s. It asks specific questions about the ways in which a theory of sex was established and translated. If sexology first evolved in German-speaking scientific contexts, then how did it migrate across Europe and North America? To what an extent did English sexology distinguish itself from its European counterparts and why did British culture prove increasingly responsive to sexual ideas? How did women contribute to a discourse that from the outset was so heavily dominated by male experts and lay readers? In short, what were the kinds of narratives that first made up the scientia sexualis, and what do their translations reveal about the links between the discourses of sexuality and the experiential realities of the sexual theorists, and their gendering?

Keywords

Sexual Identity Female Masculinity Sexual Body Woman Writer Sexual Idea 
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Notes

  1. 1.
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© Heike Bauer 2009

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  • Heike Bauer

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