The Waltzing Body in Victorian Literature by Sabrina Gilchris... - 9780198932529

The Waltzing Body in Victorian LiteratureNarratives of Sexuality and Power\nAuthor(s): Sabrina Gilchrist Hadyk\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Oxford University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Oxford University Press\nISBN-13: 9780198932529, 978-0198932529\nSynopsis\nThe Waltzing Body in Victorian Literature: Narratives of Sexuality and Power traces the evolution of the waltz from a taboo dance in the early nineteenth century to a gracefully nostalgic practice that must be preserved by the century's end. While Sabrina Gilchrist Hadyk references eighteenth-century authors to frame the waltz's initial reception in England, the study focuses primarily on Victorian authors who shaped how and why this dance was paradoxically viewed as elegant, effeminate, and sterile. Hadyk explores female sexuality and the concept of choice in the ballroom; a shifting and sometimes contradictory understanding of masculinity through male performance; the erasure of and reclamation of queer desire in heteros.