Erotolepsy

Last updated

The term erotolepsy was first used by Thomas Hardy in his 1895 novel Jude the Obscure [1] to describe a passionate sensual desire and longing which is more violent and urgently felt than erotomania. [2] It has been variously described as "love-seizure" and "sexual recklessness". [3] Derived from eroto- and -lepsy , it has since become more widely used, including by American poet Susan Mitchell in her 2001 poetry collection Erotikon. [4]

Related Research Articles

Science is a rigorous, systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world. Modern science is typically divided into three major branches: natural sciences, which study the physical world; the social sciences, which study individuals and societies; and the formal sciences, which study formal systems, governed by axioms and rules. There is disagreement whether the formal sciences are science disciplines, because they do not rely on empirical evidence. Applied sciences are disciplines that use scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as in engineering and medicine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Hardy</span> English novelist and poet (1840–1928)

Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain, such as those from his native South West England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elegy</span> Poem of serious reflection, usually a lament for the dead

An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy, "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometimes used as a catch-all to denominate texts of a somber or pessimistic tone, sometimes as a marker for textual monumentalizing, and sometimes strictly as a sign of a lament for the dead".

In Christianity, agape is "the highest form of love, charity" and "the love of God for man and of man for God". This is in contrast to philia, brotherly love, or philautia, self-love, as it embraces a profound sacrificial love that transcends and persists regardless of circumstance.

Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period and the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissance—in the Age of Reason of 17th-century thought and the 18th-century Enlightenment. Some commentators consider the era of modernity to have ended by 1930, with World War II in 1945, or the 1980s or 1990s; the following era is called postmodernity. The term "contemporary history" is also used to refer to the post-1945 timeframe, without assigning it to either the modern or postmodern era.

<i>Jude the Obscure</i> 1894/1895 novel by Thomas Hardy

Jude the Obscure is a novel by Thomas Hardy, which began as a magazine serial in December 1894 and was first published in book form in 1895. It is Hardy's last completed novel. The protagonist, Jude Fawley, is a working-class young man; he is a stonemason who dreams of becoming a scholar. The other main character is his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is also his central love interest. The novel is concerned in particular with issues of class, education, religion, morality and marriage.

There are a number of passages in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament that have been interpreted as involving same-sex sexual activity and relationships. The passages about homosexual individuals and sexual relations in the Hebrew Bible are found primarily in the Torah. The book of Leviticus chapter 20 is more comprehensive on matters of detestable sexual acts. Some texts included in the New Testament also reference homosexual individuals and sexual relations, such as the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Luke, and Pauline epistles originally directed to the early Christian churches in Asia Minor. Both references in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament have been interpreted as referring primarily to male homosexual individuals and sexual practices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fawley, Berkshire</span> Village in England

Fawley is a village and civil parish in West Berkshire, England. The hub of the village is centred 3.5 miles (5.6 km) east of Lambourn and has a sub-community within its bounds, Little or South Fawley. It includes the depopulated small hill settlement of Whatcombe. Fawley is the inspiration for "Marygreen" in Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paleobiology</span> Study of organic evolution using fossils

Paleobiology is an interdisciplinary field that combines the methods and findings found in both the earth sciences and the life sciences. Paleobiology is not to be confused with geobiology, which focuses more on the interactions between the biosphere and the physical Earth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sweet Home Chicago</span> Blues standard first recorded by Robert Johnson

"Sweet Home Chicago" is a blues standard first recorded by Robert Johnson in 1936. Although he is often credited as the songwriter, several songs have been identified as precedents. The song has become a popular anthem for the city of Chicago despite ambiguity in Johnson's original lyrics. Numerous artists have interpreted the song in a variety of styles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Hardy's Wessex</span> Fictional setting for Hardys novels

Thomas Hardy's Wessex is the fictional literary landscape created by the English author Thomas Hardy as the setting for his major novels, located in the south and southwest of England. Hardy named the area "Wessex" after the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom that existed in this part of that country prior to the unification of England by Æthelstan. Although the places that appear in his novels actually exist, in many cases he gave the place a fictional name. For example, Hardy's home town of Dorchester is called Casterbridge in his books, notably in The Mayor of Casterbridge. In an 1895 preface to the 1874 novel Far from the Madding Crowd he described Wessex as "a merely realistic dream country".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William H. McNeill (historian)</span> Canadian historian and writer (1917–2016)

William Hardy McNeill was an American historian and author, noted for his argument that contact and exchange among civilizations is what drives human history forward, first postulated in The Rise of the West (1963). He was the Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1947 until his retirement in 1987.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polish nationalism</span> Political ideology that promotes the interests of Polish nation

Polish nationalism is a form of nationalism which asserts that the Poles are a nation and promotes the cultural unity of Poles. Norman Davies, in the context of Polish nationalism, generally defined nationalism as "a doctrine ... to create a nation by arousing people's awareness of their nationality, and to mobilize their feelings into a vehicle for political action".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emma Gifford</span> English writer and suffragist

Emma Lavinia Gifford was an English writer and suffragist, who was the first wife of the novelist and poet Thomas Hardy.

A fringe theory is an idea or a viewpoint which differs from the accepted scholarship of the time within its field. Fringe theories include the models and proposals of fringe science, as well as similar ideas in other areas of scholarship, such as the humanities. In a narrower sense, the term fringe theory is commonly used as a pejorative; it is roughly synonymous with the term pseudo-scholarship. Precise definitions that make distinctions between widely held viewpoints, fringe theories, and pseudo-scholarship are difficult to construct because of the demarcation problem. Issues of false balance or false equivalence can occur when fringe theories are presented as being equal to widely accepted theories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Creampie (sexual act)</span> Sexual act involving internal ejaculation

A creampie is a sexual act, commonly featured in hardcore pornography, in which a man ejaculates inside his partner's vagina or anus without the use of a condom, resulting in visible seeping or dripping of semen from the orifice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas P. Hardy House</span> Historic house in Wisconsin, United States

The Thomas P. Hardy House is a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Prairie school home in Racine, Wisconsin, USA, that was built in 1905. The street-facing side of the house is mostly stucco, giving the residents privacy from the nearby sidewalk and street, but the expansive windows on the other side open up to Lake Michigan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Kuhn</span> American philosopher of science (1922–1996)

Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American historian and philosopher of science whose 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term paradigm shift, which has since become an English-language idiom.

Robert Woodrow Langbaum was an American author. He was University of Virginia James Branch Cabell professor of English and American literature (1967–99) and professor emeritus from 1999.

<i>Jude the Obscure</i> (serial) British TV series or programme

Jude the Obscure is a British television serial directed by Hugh David, starring Robert Powell, Fiona Walker, and Alex Marshall, first broadcast on BBC Television in early 1971. It is based on Thomas Hardy's novel Jude the Obscure (1895).

References

  1. Thomas Hardy (1983). Jude the Obscure. Plain Label Books. p. 204. ISBN   1-60303-779-9.
  2. Maria DiBattista (1991). First Love: The Affections of Modern Fiction. University of Chicago Press. p. 93. ISBN   0-226-14498-4.
  3. John Sutherland (2005). So You Think You Know Thomas Hardy?: A Literary Quizbook. p. 214. ISBN   0-19-280443-X.
  4. Thomas Bartscherer (2005). Erotikon: Essays on Eros, Ancient and Modern. University of Chicago Press. p. 27. ISBN   0-226-03838-6.