| Description |
1 online resource (viii, 241 pages) : illustrations |
| Contents |
Seduced and enslaved: sexual violence in antebellum American literature and contemporary feminist discourse. "Rape crisis" or "Crisis in sexual identity"? The feminist rhetoric of rape -- "Guilty passions" and "Foul words": the powers of seduction and the racialization of sexual violence -- The deployment of sexual violence and the "cult of secrecy": historicizing the feminist rhetoric of rape. The rise of the (Black) rapist and the reconstruction of difference; or, "realist" rape. "Black claws into soft white throat" and other bestialities: rapist rhetoric, rivalry, and homosocial desire in Thomas Nelson Page's Red rock, Thomas Dixon's The clansman, and Frank Norris's McTeague -- "A tender lamb snatched from the jaws of a hungry wolf": inversions of rapist rhetoric in Frances E.W. Harper's Iola Leroy -- "The one crime" and "the real 'one crime'": rape, lynching, and mimicry in Sutton E. Griggs's The Hindered hand -- "A thing not to be faced": rape as robbery in Upton Sinclair's The jungle -- "Unconscious penetration": manners, money, and the primitive man in Edith Wharton's The house of mirth -- "The kind we can't resist": the lesson of William Vaughn Moody's A Sabine woman. Rape and the artifice of representation: four modernist modes. "Soiled! Despoiled! Handled! Mauled! Rumpled! Rummaged! Ransacked!": styles and hyperboles of seduction, rape, and incest in Djuna Barnes's Ryder -- "That little hot ball inside you that screams": rape's resistance to representation, the resistance to rape, and the transgression of boundaries in William Faulkner's Sanctuary -- "Not what one did to women": enacting projections and constructing the racial border in Richard Wright's Native Son -- Fighting "forced relationship": rape and manslaughter in Ann Petry's The Street -- Voicing sexual violence, repoliticizing rape: post modernist narratives of sexuality and power. "Mankind's greatest crime, man's inhumanity to man": Chester Himes's A case study of rape -- "Plain black (gender) trouble": intraracial rape, incest, and other family feuds -- "Phantom men" and "zipless fucks": rape fantasies and the fictions of female desire -- "An obscene posture that no one could help": sodomy, male anxiety, and the "crisis of homo/heterosexual definition" in James Dickey's Deliverance. Challenging readings of rape |
| Summary |
Reading Rape examines how American culture talks about sexual violence and explains why, in the latter twentieth century, rape achieved such significance as a trope of power relations. Through attentive readings of a wide range of literary and cultural representations of sexual assault--from antebellum seduction narratives and "realist" representations of rape in nineteenth-century novels to Deliverance, American Psycho, and contemporary feminist accounts--Sabine Sielke traces the evolution of a specifically American rhetoric of rape. She considers the kinds of cultural work that this rhetoric |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-232) and index |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
American fiction -- History and criticism
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Rape in literature.
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Feminism and literature -- United States -- History
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Women and literature -- United States -- History
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English language -- United States -- Rhetoric
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Rape -- United States -- History
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Rape victims in literature.
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Sex crimes in literature.
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Violence in literature.
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LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General.
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American fiction
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English language -- Rhetoric
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Feminism and literature
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Rape
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Rape in literature
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Rape victims in literature
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Sex crimes in literature
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Violence in literature
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Women and literature
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Verkrachting.
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Seksuele mishandeling.
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Feminisme.
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Letterkunde.
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Cultuur.
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Amerikaans.
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United States
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| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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History
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9781400824946 |
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140082494X |
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1400814685 |
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9781400814688 |
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