Domestic Architecture, Literature and the Sexual Imaginary in Europe, 1850–1930 by Martí-Balcells, Aina;

Short description:

This book sheds light on the contributions of architecture and its literary representations to a series of changes taking place in sexual culture during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in France, England, Germany and Austria.

Long description:

This book sheds light on the contributions of architecture and its literary representations to a series of changes taking place in sexual culture during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in France, England, Germany and Austria. By analysing an important set of architectural discourses and literary representations of domestic architecture, the book illustrates the constant tension between an increasing sexual permissiveness and more conservative approaches to domesticity and sexuality. It shows the ways in which literature imagined the impact of new architectural designs on sexual culture that suggested the creation of more fluid forms of organisation of space and sexual mores.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

Chapter 1: Adultery and the Subversion of Architectural Prescriptiveness in Madame Bovary and The Return of the NativeChapter 2: Sexual Accessibility and Exhibitionism: Glass in La CuréeChapter 3: Glass Dwellings and the Dissolution of Adultery in Fontane’s L’AdulteraChapter 4: Domestic and Sexual Circulation in Huysmans’ En ménageChapter 5: Vienna: Towards a New Domestic Imaginary

Bibliography