The Sodomite in Fiction and Satire, 1660-1750 (Between Men~Between Women: Lesbian and Gay Studies)

Rating:
Summary: Worthwhile addition to Eighteeenth-Century Studies
Review: McFarlane's book is quite good on the topic it covers. It avoids essentializing or questing after gay identity in a politically-motivated way (although this too has led to worthwhile criticism), and remains skeptical and interested in the ways that the figure of the sodomite is constructed as a political and moral trope that captures many other "transgressions" beyond that it claims to name. Particularly relevant and enlightening are his readings of Smollet and Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.