TY - JOUR
T1 - Amour in the Shrubbery: reading the detail of English adultery trial publications of the 1780s
AU - Lloyd, S.
N1 - Original article can be found at: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/eighteenth-century_studies/ Copyright The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. DOI: 10.1353/ecs.2006.0025 [Full text of this article is not available in the UHRA]
PY - 2006
Y1 - 2006
N2 - This article examines how late-eighteenth-century knowledge about adultery was constituted through English publications based on legal evidence of female infidelity. A mass of published fragments and hints produced distinctive perspectives on contemporary cultural and social issues. Two cases of 1785, which involved shrubberies, exemplify how such discussion appropriated and re-contextualized discourses, including that of landscape improvement. Shrubbery brought additional resonances to an adultery trial literature which in the 1780s played with ideas about the freedom and rights of women within marriage. However, shrubbery's adulterous politics of subordination and objectification also had implications for the politics and aesthetics of landscape itself.
AB - This article examines how late-eighteenth-century knowledge about adultery was constituted through English publications based on legal evidence of female infidelity. A mass of published fragments and hints produced distinctive perspectives on contemporary cultural and social issues. Two cases of 1785, which involved shrubberies, exemplify how such discussion appropriated and re-contextualized discourses, including that of landscape improvement. Shrubbery brought additional resonances to an adultery trial literature which in the 1780s played with ideas about the freedom and rights of women within marriage. However, shrubbery's adulterous politics of subordination and objectification also had implications for the politics and aesthetics of landscape itself.
U2 - 10.1353/ecs.2006.0025
DO - 10.1353/ecs.2006.0025
M3 - Article
SN - 0013-2586
VL - 39
SP - 421
EP - 442
JO - Eighteenth-Century Studies
JF - Eighteenth-Century Studies
IS - 4
ER -