Abstract
Though the theme of love is universal and appears in world literature from Homer and Cervantes to Henry James and William Faulkner, the closely related theme of sexuality has, in the past history of American culture, been glossed over with genteel circumlocutions or been discreetly omitted. It is these euphemistic evasions or strategic omissions that point to the moral taboos of a given age and to the values society ostensibly abides by. Not that writers are as a profession inclined to be mealy-mouthed Puritans. The shades of Rabelais, Fielding, Robert Burns, Jonathan Swift, Baudelaire, and Flaubert bear eloquent witness to the contrary. The history of literature is replete with accounts of stormy rebels who formulated new standards of conduct based on what they considered to be a truer conception of man. But in the main literature reflects the mores and conventions of its age.
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References
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© 1971 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Glicksberg, C.I. (1971). The Forerunners of Revolt. In: The Sexual Revolution in Modern American Literature. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3236-0_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3236-0_3
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