Charting the construction of sexual perversions in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century medical, psychiatric and psychological discourse, Schaffner argues that sexologists' preoccupation with these perversions was a response to specifically modern concerns, and illuminates the role of literary texts in the formation of sexological knowledge.

Autorentext
ANNA KATHARINA SCHAFFNER teaches Comparative Literature and is Co-Director of the Centre for Modern European Literature at the University of Kent, UK. Her publications include a monograph on avant-garde poetry entitled Sprachzerlegung in historischer Avantgardelyrik und konkreter Poesie (2007) and articles on Dada, David Lynch, Franz Kafka, Frank Schulz, Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Thomas Mann.

Inhalt
Acknowledgments Introduction PART I: THE PERVERSIONS IN SEXOLOGY The Birth of a Science: From Masturbation Theory to Krafft-Ebing The French Scene: Degeneration Theory and the Invention of Fetishism Sexology in England: Ellis, Carpenter and Lawrence The Golden Age of Sexology in Germany: Activism, Institutionalization and the Anthropological Turn Freud, Literature and the Perversification of Mankind PART II: THE PERVERSIONS IN MODERNIST LITERATURE Homosexuality: Thomas Mann and the Degenerate Sublime Anal Sex: D.H. Lawrence and the Back Door to Transcendence Sadism: Marcel Proust and the Banality of Evil Masochism: Franz Kafka and the Eroticization of Suffering Fetishism: Georges Bataille and Sexual-Textual Transgression Conclusion Bibliography