“Cuck” has become a favorite insult amongst alt-right types. In today’s post I trace literary references to cuckolds going back to Chaucer.
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Tag Archives: William Wycherley
A Literary History of the Insult “Cuck”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged alt-right, As You Like It, Canterbury Tales, Christopher Marlowe, Country Wife, cuckold jokes, cuckolds, cuckservatives, Doctor Faustus, Donald Trump, Geoffrey Chaucer, Miller's Tale, Othello, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Women Battling the Marriage Plot
Although men got the quest plot while women were relegated to the marriage plot in the 18th century, a number of women writers found imaginative ways to circumvent it. Among these were Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Lover", Aphra Behn, Country Wife, Haywood (Eliza), John Wilmot, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Marriage Plot, quest plot, Rover, To a Lady in a Letter Comments closed
On Supply Side and Self Deception
In Wycherley’s “Country Wife,” the entire society grasps at an implausible story to sustain its self deception. Sounds like the GOP and supply side economics.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged budget cuts, Country Wife, Economics, politics, sequester Comments closed
The Horror of Sex without Love
Sex without love, the subject of several sex comedies this past summer, was also an issue explored by poets and playwrights in the British Restoration.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Against Constancy, Comedy, Country Wife, Film, Friends with Benefits, John Wilmot, Libertine, No Strings Attached, sex, Sex without Love, Sharon Olds Comments closed
Extreme Jealousy, a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
William Wycherley As I’ve been writing recently about Restoration and 18th Century couples comedies, allow me one last post on a brilliant but cold play, William Wycherley’s Country Wife (1675). I gained new insight into it when my student Stephanie Gonzalez noted that the jealousy theme in the play is one that she is very […]