Fragments of ontology, theories of fiction: Sexuality, moral philosophy, and nineteenth-century English literature

"Fragments of Ontology, Theories of Fiction" offers an analysis of mid-eighteenth- to mid-nineteenth-century accounts of the supposed social consequences of same-sex sexual activity as represented in literature, law, and philosophy. Starting with John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, the dissertation focuses on the ideological work that stories and theories about action and consequence perform in their cultural, political, and philosophical contexts. Cleland's famous erotic novel stages a scene of sodomy between two youths in order to differentiate their sexual actions from those of the novel's protagonist, Fanny Hill. The logic by which this differentiation is made is, in turn, re-examined in the context of eighteenth-century common law arguments about obscenity and social harm. My argument then turns to the analytical jurisprudence of Jeremy Bentham and his vigorous defense of "paederasty" in two texts, "Paederasty" and "Offences Against the Taste." Bentham uses philosophical utilitarianism to analyze the consequences of same-sex sexual actions and their supposed harms to society. Bentham differentiates "paederasty" from "sodomy" in order to claim that the former promotes the promulgation of society and culture. From Bentham, I move on to Charles Dickens and his figurations of violence and sex in the sentimental novel, Dombey and Son. This chapter argues that the novel's system of gendered identifications and queer desires are at cross-purposes with a project to secure sexual reproduction to cultural reproduction. The dissertation ends with a discussion of the mysterious suicide of Robert Stewart, Lord Castlereagh, and the status of "acts" as "fact" in our literary and cultural histories and theories of literature.