‘ “His foul Imagination links / Each Dame he sees with all her stinks”: Masculinity and Obsessional Disorder in The Lady’s Dressing Room’
- Submitting institution
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Coventry University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 19309676
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- Jonathan Swift and Philosophy
- Publisher
- Rowman and Littlefield
- ISBN
- 978-1498521536
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- December
- Year of publication
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- This chapter is part of a collection that is the first to analyse and interpret Swift's writing from a philosophical angle. Reflecting the further turn since the end of the Second World War towards a serious re-examination of Swift’s poetic output, and towards a reassessment of its relative importance in his oeuvre in relation to his prose, this chapter brings a number of these interests together by reassessing one of Swift’s most notorious poetic productions. The Lady’s Dressing Room (1730).
Swift’s poem has been criticized for the absence of the central female character, and thus deserving a reputation as misogynistic. But this belies a complex study of obsessional curiosity which needs to be rethought. The chapter argues that this poem is no expression of misogynist thinking but rather gives evidence of Swift’s deliberation about disordered mental states, which establishes him as a truly modern thinker.
Using both modern-day (postfeminist) theories of masculinity, and contemporary work on obsessive compulsive disorders, the chapters proposes that the poem can be viably read as taking its place in the pantheon of Swift’s writings about disordered mental states. More specifically, it addresses the relation between disturbed, dysfunctional masculinity and obsessionality, anticipating the variant of obsessive compulsive disorder often today termed “primarily obsessional obsessive compulsive disorder” (or “Pure OCD”).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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