Romantic Incest: Gender, Desire, and Defiance

Building on the work of Eve Sedgwick and Martha Nussbaum in their theories of the emotions and of Peter Thorslev and Alan Richardson in Romantic studies, I investigate how selected writers confronted the challenge of presenting the violation, especially the conscious violation, of one of the strongest sexual taboos. Contesting critical claims that incest is treated in Romantic-era literature as the epitome of self-reflexive and narcissistic love, I argue that it must rather be understood as related to the Romantic destabilization of normative gender roles and exploration of alternative political conditions.