2023-2024 Humanities Center Doctoral Dissertation Fellow

Erika Carbonara, Doctoral Candidate, English

Dissertation Advisor: Simone Chess

Title: 'It's a Bawdy Planet': Conceptualizing Early Modern Kink Identities and Practices

Abstract: My dissertation situates early modern British literature alongside the emerging field of kink studies. Although the origin of kink is often cited as the 1791 publication of the Marquis de Sade’s Justine, I suggest that there is an expansive history of kink dating back to the early modern period. My dissertation focuses specifically on kinky communities in early modern England to argue that communities, rather than sex acts or practices alone, are an integral aspect of early modern kinky practices. The first chapter analyzes representations of cuckold communities in early modern ballads. Early modern cuckolds are typically derided figures in the literature, but I suggest that many of these representations can be interpreted as celebratory and kinky. In the second chapter I argue that theater audiences often constitute a temporary community of voyeurs through a reading of metatheatrical commentary, antitheatrical pamphlets, and sermons. In the third and fourth chapters, I turn from my focus on fixed, tangible communities to an exploration of the more abstract and nebulous through an analysis of the merchant economy and the origins of kinky props in the third chapter, and, finally, I suggest that nature itself is a form of eroticized community in the final chapter. This project seeks to legitimize kink not only as a literary and cultural lens, but also, and more importantly, it aims to securely situate kink identities within a queer framework in order to destigmatize the practice of kink.