Sexual Violence and Literary Art

Sexual Violence and Literary Art addresses the complicity of representation in what is represented, and its creative transformations, by re-examining classic poetic, dramatic and fictional texts by men in light of women’s philosophical, theoretical and critical responses to them.

Written by a practising poet and novelist who has close experience of the subject matter and has published creative work in the areas being examined, Sexual Violence and Literary Art is a wide-ranging study, covering carefully selected works from Ovid through Shakespeare to Pope, Richardson, Shelley, Hardy, Nabokov and beyond. It addresses the necessary complicity of any representation in what is represented, by examining ways in which canonical male writers have attempted to evoke and address representations of sexual violence in poetry, prose fiction, and poetic drama in light of women’s philosophical, theoretical and critical responses to these works of literary art.