| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.2

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| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.2 | The History Cooperative

REVIEWS

Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender in English Erotic Culture. By Karen Harvey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 272 pp.).

As a book intended to introduce students and scholars to ways of reading erotic imagery in literature, Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century has much to recommend it. Karen Harvey is a sophisticated scholar whose methods of analysis highlight the richness of her subject. By offering a wide variety of intertwining readings that examine gender, space, motion, stasis, sensory gratification and disgust, Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century shows that codes about sex, sexuality, and gender are anything but obvious. Indeed, Harvey demonstrates that sexual knowledge is deeply encoded and involved in multiple conversations that need to be closely examined. By excavating the multiple and often contradictory ways that erotic literature represents sex and bodies, Harvey has shown herself a master of textual examination. Some of the work that Harvey does here, such as reading the sensory descriptions of sexuality, raises very interesting issues about the emphasis on touch over smell and sight over sound, issues that will no doubt affect future readings of erotic literature.

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