Chapter 5, building directly on the impasse of Hamlet’s inaction, looks to Henry Chettle’s The Tragedy of Hoffmann and Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy in exploring how these near-contemporary plays react to Hamlet’s existential impasse and tragic theatrical deficiency. The chapter especially attends to how Chettle and Middleton translate Shakespeare’s ethics of ‘marking’ into a wild exploration of the transgressive limits of moral being on the margins of what remains, once the performance of action leaves behind it a ruined and malformed metaphysics of morality. They do so by re-focusing the genre’s theatrical energy on multiple acts of violent revenge and transgression, paradoxically framed by a moral idealism often on the verge of tipping into frantic paranoia. As this chapter finally shows, the emerging actorly agency explored in these plays bears surprising consequences for how their imagined audiences are asked to understand and experience the passions attending the revenge act.

As seemingly cognate sub-genres of history, the history of sexuality and women’s history have a complicated relationship. Both tell 1970s origins stories from global north liberation movements, despite the scholarly scrutiny of sexuality and women in earlier historical periods. Core journals and publications reveal these sub-fields’ distinctive, sometimes incommensurate development trajectories. Perhaps due to their recent advent, presentism is clear in both, with the corollary of a marked post-1800 skew of most research and publications. Women’s history tracks women, in all their subdivisions, of necessity with focus upon sexualities in many registers, while seeking address of race, indigeneity, ethnicity, and international and global foci. Alternatively, the history of sexuality prioritizes sexual minorities and erotic alterities, welcoming studies of identities, expression, and representation. Key themes are transgressive resistance against repression and heteronormativity, entailing special concentration on same-sex history. Women figure within these themes, while innovative feminists are influential historians of sexuality. Nonetheless, women’s history and feminist analysis of sexualities have no default standing for the history of sexuality. In short, intellectual, methodological, and political properties prove less reciprocal than might be presumed. These exciting areas of history should evolve, to illuminate crucial topics for both, for instance reproduction. As both pursue aims to incorporate all historical periods and regions, their interconnections may become stronger.

The sexual culture of eighteenth-century Philadelphia was relatively open, particularly when compared with other North American colonial cities. This was due in part to its diverse, multi-national and multi-racial population and traditions, as well as to a steady stream of new ideas. During this period perceptions about gender, sexuality, and marriage were evolving, influenced by new scientific theories, Enlightenment thought, and republican ideology, disseminated by its changing population and the availability of printed sources. In addition, many laws changed as the colony became a state, and within the city new prisons and almshouses were built. Nevertheless, rape, as now, was seldom reported or prosecuted, and especially in the nineteenth century Black women and women considered ‘unrespectable’ were often blamed for enticing men. During the eighteenth century men and women easily moved in and out of relationships, sexual relationships outside marriage were frequently tolerated, and women had some sexual freedom. Prostitution was not confined to one section of the city; neither were the births of illegitimate children. Women could obtain abortifacients, and erotic literature was widely read. However, by the nineteenth century such behaviour was increasingly considered deviant, and Philadelphia was a much less tolerant place.

This chapter interrogates what it means for heavy metal to identify as ‘outsider’ music in the 2020s and beyond. Resistance, transgression and rebellion have long been central to metal’s generic identity, where metal has long traded on a reputation as ‘outsider’ music, a genre populated by proud pariahs who exist on the edge of acceptability. However, such rebellion has been troubled by metal’s commercial success, geolocal diversification and generational shifts amongst fans, where ‘resistance’ takes on different trajectories as metal manifests within multiple political zeitgeists and contexts. This chapter then explores how metal’s politics of transgression have played out in varied ways as metal communities worldwide negotiate shifting ideological contexts and markets, calling into focus questions of performative transgression and commodified dissent. This chapter thus leads with a central provocation: Is it still possible for metal to be rebellious in the twenty-first century? And has it ever really been?

Molière is generally viewed as a comic author who mocks all aspects of society – aristocratic, bourgeois and peasant. However, he was himself part of this tripartite society and adopted points of view that, when we examine them, we see to be those of his caste – one of the people who dined at the King’s table. He was, in fact, at the intersection of two worlds, the court and the town (Paris), and in his works we meet individuals from different milieus, in the plays themselves but also making up the audiences that came to see them. He makes his characters ridiculous through exaggeration, thereby rendering less credible whatever they represent. When presenting different comic situations, Molière never comes down on one side or another. Instead, he offers suggestions, and leaves their appreciation up to the members of the public. They, according to their status or the circumstances in which they see the plays, receive them in one way or another, but always refuse to recognise themselves in any particular character. The focus of this article is, therefore, to determine whether Molière, whose criticism was so acerbic, really was this transgressive and subversive bourgeois author.

People are susceptible to boredom and seek an optimal level of arousal. Psychopathic individuals appear to be low on arousal, and they try to elevate this by seeking novelty and taking risks. Ways to achieve the optimal level by sensation-seeking include transgressions such as violence, arson and theft. These can have sexual associations and are sometimes accompanied by masturbation. Dopamine activation is at the basis of elevations in arousal. Serial lust killers commonly have a history of committing non-sexual crimes and arson. The internal organs of the body are under the control of the autonomic nervous system, high arousal being associated with dominance of the sympathetic branch and low arousal with the parasympathetic branch. Arousal is largely non-specific, and it takes a positive or negative value according to context. Switches can be made from negative to positive, which appears to lie at the basis of some lust killing.

Research has proliferated on several topics that have invited new methodological approaches: the rural setting, gendered relations between men and women, communal status of minorities (Christians and Jews), and religious diversity among Muslims, in particular among those who identified as Sufi mystics. New sources and revisionist interpretations of them continue to transform the field of Mamluk Studies. Yet in many instances, findings on these subjects are confined to discoveries of information on discrete conditions or isolated events that do not lend themselves to comprehensive analysis. They often depend on a single source or fragmentary data set, and require imaginative speculation to formulate hypotheses that apply to questions about their broader contexts in society. The chapter will outline the state of research on these subjects and their potential to open new lines of inquiry by highlighting examples that have influenced revisionist interpretations.

In this chapter, we introduce the notion of “transgression space” to describe the structure of governance of websites on which the community is characterized by the strong presence of trolls. Trolls are defined as users who constantly challenge the rules of websites they browse through, namely by posting transgressive content. The transgression space corresponds in this perspective to the arena of interactions in such communities. We demonstrate through a case study on the ``BlaBla 18-25’’ forum of jeuxvideo.com that the governance of these transgression spaces can be analysed through the Governing Knowledge Commons framework, allowing us to generalize this notion for other case studies.

The Conclusion begins with a brief review of the contents of Chapters 1 through 4 with special emphasis on the elements claimed to be uniquely ‘Kamigata.’ Next, it is proposed that, while it is a chief claim in this study that Kamigata rakugo is decidedly ‘merchant-centered,’ merchant stories usually do not reflect shōnin katagi – the way idealized merchants act, think, and feel. Instead of being presented as hard workers, innovative, and skilled, they are generally portrayed as irresponsible, unskilled, and weak. The incongruity of this image creates the basis for much of the humor in Kamigata rakugo stories, but – just as Edo storytellers targeted the established order (i.e., samurai) with indirect jokes and pranks as authorities grew weaker at the end of the early modern era – this also points to an undercurrent of transgression, which developed in step with the loss of faith in and subsequent breakdown of Osaka merchant traditions.

From the 1960s, significant numbers of Caribbean writers migrated to Canada, which modelled itself as a space of inclusion and multiculturalism. Yet, the terms of multiculturalism that structure Canadian public discourse have been challenged by first- and second-generation Caribbean writers who have critiqued Canada’s processes of homogenization and racism. This essay proposes alternate landscapes as a way to consider contemporary Caribbean-Canadian literature, which has had to transgress Canada’s sense of itself in order to be seen and heard. The work emerging from this period, and particularly from the 1980s, is written predominantly by women and posits non-territorially based spaces as its conceptual home. Through an examination of work by Dionne Brand, Makeda Silvera, NourbeSe Philip, Marie-Célie Agnant and Ramabai Espinet, among others, this article highlights their varied approaches to identity, nation, belonging and language, as well as the generic diversity of their work (dub poetry, science fiction, fantasy and satire).

Roman elegy makes frequent use of themes of ugliness and disfigurement, juxtaposing them with images of ideal beauty and sentiment. In order to overcome the obstacles to his erotic relationship, the poet–lover repeatedly represents his rivals and opponents in such a way as to ridicule their appearance and to degrade their social standing. My purpose in this study is to explore the theme of corporeal, intellectual, and social degradation from a perspective attentive to the aesthetic significance of the grotesque imagery with which such degradation is accomplished. I undertake to show that the grotesque plays a significant role in the self-definition of the genre in which it is least expected. Grotesque and idealizing imagery constitute the polarities of a dialectic that lies at the core of elegy. Classical scholars have long been interested in the use of grotesque imagery in such genres as comedy, invective, and satire. There is a sophisticated discussion of the grotesque in these areas of classical literature, which are concerned in part with themes of transgression and excess. Grotesque imagery occurs frequently also in elegy, a genre that foregrounds love and beauty.

This chapter reflects on the implications of censorship for writers working after 1940, first, by questioning the extent to which its imposition hampered the expression of a modern literary generation, and second, by exploring the strategies through which it was sidestepped and transgressed by both writers and readers in this period. It considers both the cultural implications of domestic censorship for Irish writers between 1940 and 1980, and the means that existed for circumventing the policing of ‘foreign’ literature. It highlights the pervasive effects of censorship across the middle decades of the century. First, the focus is on Kate O’Brien, Seán O’Faoláin and Frank O’Connor, all born before independence, who found themselves directly at odds with the country they had seen created. Faced with the banning of their own books, they battled to resist official strictures of their work. It then considers a subsequent generation of writers – including Edna O’Brien, Leland Bardwell, John Montague, John McGahern and Julia O’Faoláin – born during a period in which censorship had already become embedded within Irish literary culture. Finally, this chapter concludes by examining the experience of Colm Tóibín, who grew up in the 1950s, when censorship was still a dominant force.

Critics have tended to dismiss Wharton’s depictions of children as victims of their parents’ misbehavior (Paul Marvell of The Custom of the Country) to optimistic symbols of the future (Nettie Struther’s baby in The House of Mirth), failing to take into account the complexity of children as characters. In fact, Wharton’s novels are populated with children – typically girls – marked by suggestions of gender queerness; transgression, seduction, and aggression; age-impropriety; and ethnic ambiguity. From “The Valley of Childish Things” (1896) to “A Little Girl’s New York” (1938), Wharton emphasizes the absence of childhood innocence and the resistance of children to linear development. Wharton’s children are rarely innocent, frequently knowing, and resistant to narratives of linear development. Concentrating on the novels The Reef (1912) and The Children (1928), and touching on other works by Wharton, I demonstrate how this theme flows throughout the author’s corpus.

Two texts that situate themselves in Storyville in the early twentieth century and hinge on the work of historic photographer, E. J. Bellocq, delineate themes of race, gender, and agency in rich historical detail: Michael Ondaatje’s Coming through Slaughter and Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia. The former text, an experimental novel based on the career of jazz musician Buddy Bolden, is ultimately pessimistic about the possibilities of this African American man to transcend the limitations imposed on him by the larger society, whereas Trethewey’s book of poetry delineates hopeful potentials in a light-skinned prostitute.

Traditional Christianity includes a number of ideas with affinities to decadence, notably the eschatological belief that the end of the world is imminent (a belief that has its secular counterpart in the idea of historical and social decline) and the dogma of original sin. This chapter sketches out ‘a theology of decadence’ by showing how particular theological ideas ? principally those concerned with transgression, punishment, and apocalypse ? grew anew in the strange and modern hothouse of decadent literary form. Baudelaire and his use of original sin as formulated by the Catholic theologian Joseph de Maistre ramifies into the work of Joris-Karl Huysmans before moving on to the apocalyptically-charged flowering of decadence in England at the Victorian fin de siècle. These theological influences are particularly evident in The Picture of Dorian Gray, where Wilde reflects the dual inheritance of an aesthetic relativism derived from Walter Pater and theological ideas of sin and punishment as a form of apocalyptic crisis.