Libertine Enlightenment: Sex Liberty and Licence in the Eighteenth Century

263 Pages·2003·1.591 MB·English

by  Peter Cryle, Lisa O’Connell (eds.)

Libertine Enlightenment
Also by Peter Cryle
LA CRISE DU PLAISIR, 1740–1830
GEOMETRY IN THE BOUDOIR: Configurations of French Erotic
Narrative
THE TELLING OF THE ACT: Sexuality as Narrative in Eighteenth- and
Nineteenth-Century France
Libertine Enlightenment
Sex Liberty and Licence in the
Eighteenth Century
Edited by
Peter Cryle
Director, Centre for the History of European Discourses
University of Queensland
and
Lisa O’Connell
School of English, Media Studies and Art History
University of Queensland
© Editorial matter, selection, Peter Cryle and Lisa O’Connell 2003
© Chapter 2 Éditions Denoël 2003; all remaining material © Palgrave Macmillan
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-1-4039-1763-8
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DOI 10.1057/9780230522817
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Libertine enlightenment: sex, liberty, and licence in the eighteenth-century /
edited by Peter Cryle and Lisa O’Connell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Europe–Moral conditions–History–18th century. 2. Sex
customs–Europe–History–18th century. 3. Libertinism–Europe–History–18th
century. 4. Dissenters–Europe–History–18th century. 5. Europe–Intellectual
life–History–18th century. 6. Libertinism in literature. I. Title: Sex, liberty, and
licence in the eighteenth-century. II. Cryle, P.M. (Peter Maxwell), 1946– III.
O’Connell, Lisa, 1965–
HN380.Z9M65 2003
306’. 094’09033–dc21
2003053608
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03
Contents
List of Figures vii
Acknowledgements viii
Notes on the Contributors ix
Sex, Liberty and Licence in the Eighteenth Century 1
Part I Disquieting Theories
1 Taking Liberties: Sterne, Wilkes and Warburton 15
Simon During
2 Casanova: Inscriptions of Forgetting 34
Chantal Thomas
3 Codified Indulgence: The Niceties of Libertine Ethics 48
in Casanova and His Contemporaries
Peter Cryle
4 Kant, Sade and the Libertine Enlightenment 61
Alan Corkhill
5 Philosophical Liberty, Sexual Licence: The Ambiguity 75
of Voltaire’s Libertinage
Serge Rivière
Part II Improper Women
6 The Female Rake: Gender, Libertinism and Enlightenment 93
Kathleen Wilson
7 The Making of a Libertine Queen: Jeanne de La Motte 112
and Marie-Antoinette
Iain McCalman
8 Secrecy and Enlightenment: Delarivier Manley’s New Atalantis 145
Nicola Parsons
9 Authorship and Libertine Celebrity: Harriette Wilson’s 161
Regency Memoirs
Lisa O’Connell
v
vi Contents
Part III Spurious Practices
10 Libertines and Radicals in the 1790s: The Strange Case 183
of Charles Pigott I
Jonathan Mee
11 James Graham as Spiritual Libertine 204
Peter Otto
12 The Mysteries of Imposture: Count Cagliostro’s 221
Literary Legacy in German Romanticism
Christa Knellwolf
13 Children of the Midnight Mass 236
Patrick Wald Lasowski
Index 248
List of Figures
Jacket William Hogarth, ‘John Wilkes, Esq.’, 1763
(reproduced by permission of the National Portrait
Gallery, London).
Figure 1 William Hogarth, ‘John Wilkes, Esq.’, 1763 19
(reproduced by permission of the National Portrait
Gallery, London).
Figure 2 Sir Joshua Reynolds, ‘Laurence Sterne’, 1760 20
(reproduced by permission of the National Portrait
Gallery, London).
Figure 3 ‘Jeanne St Remy de Valois de La Motte’ from 117
D. Lysons, Historical Account of the Environs of London,
1795–1811 Vol. III (opp. p. 306) (reproduced by permission
of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California).
Figure 4 Sir Godfrey Kneller, ‘Sarah Jennings, Dutchess of 151
Marlborough’, 1705 (reproduced by permission of The
National Trust).
Figure 5 H. H. [Heath], ‘La Coterie Debouché’, 1825 176
(reproduced by permission of the British Museum).
Figure 6 ‘Soulagement en prison; or Comfort in prison’, 196
1793 (reproduced by permission of the British Museum).
Figure 7 ‘Count Cagliostro’ from W.R.H. Trowbridge, 223
Cagliostro: The Splendour and Misery of a Master of Magic,
E.P. Dutton, New York, 1910, frontispiece (courtesy of Iain
McCalman).
vii
Acknowledgements
This book has its origins in a conference held at the University of
Queensland in 2001. Financial support for that event was provided by
the University’s Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, under the
leadership of Graeme Turner. Administrative support of a sustained
and continually inventive kind was provided by Andrea Mitchell, with
the aid of Diana Jones and Marguerite Nolan. Contributions to
funding were also made by the Humanities Research Centre
(Australian National University) and by the French Ministry of
Culture. Michelle Poole, of the University of Queensland, assisted us
with the cover image. Matthew Bailey, of the National Portrait
Gallery, Jean-Robert Durbin of the Huntington Library, Elisabeth
Stacey, of the National Trust Photographic Library, Nicki Athanassi of
Editions Denoël and Ivor Kerslake and Jenny Ramkalawon, both of the
British Museum, kindly facilitated the business of obtaining illustra-
tions and translations. Finally, the preparation of what we still fondly
call the manuscript owes a lot to our research assistants: Catriona
Mills, Phoebe Ling and the wonderful Amanda Lynch.
viii
Notes on the Contributors
Alan Corkhill is a senior lecturer in German Studies in the School of
Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of
Queensland. He is Australasian editor of the German literary periodical
Seminar and serves on the editorial panel of AUMLA. He is the sole
author of four books, the most recent of which interrogates happiness
discourses in the German novel from 1766 to 1809 (Röhrig
Universitätsverlag, Saarbrücken, 2003).
Peter Cryle is the director of the Centre for the History of European
Discourses at the University of Queensland. He works on the history of
erotic narrative in French. His publications include Geometry in the
Boudoir(Cornell University Press, 1994); The Telling of the Act (University
of Delaware Press, 2001); and La Crise du plaisir (Universitaires du
Septentrion, 2003).
Simon Duringteaches in the Department of English at Johns Hopkins
University. He is the author of Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power
of Secular Magic (Harvard University Press, 2002); Foucault and Literature
(Routledge, 1992); and Patrick White (Oxford University Press, 1996);
and editor of The Cultural Studies Reader (1995, 2000).
Christa Knellwolf is based at the Humanities Research Centre at the
Australian National University. She is the author of A Contradiction
Still: Representations of Women in the Poetry of Alexander Pope
(Manchester University Press, 1998); an editor of The Cambridge History
of Literary Criticism, vol. 9 (2001), and editor of two journal issues
drawn from the XIthDavid Nichol Smith Conference on the Exotic in
the Eighteenth Century: a special issue of Eighteenth-Century Life 26.3
(2002) and of Signatures5 (2002/3).
Iain McCalmanis Director of the Humanities Research Centre at the
Australian National University and President of the Australian
Academy of the Humanities. He is a specialist in eigtheenth-century
British and European history and has a particular interest in the history
of popular culture and low life. His recent publications include the
Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age (1999) and the jointly edited
Gold: Forgotten Histories and Lost Objects of Australia (Cambridge
University Press, 2001). His forthcoming works include The Last
ix