Patterson’s pornographic portraits: a deconstruction of the sex scenes in the novel the children of sisyphus
Date
2021-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AFRICAN JOURNALS ONLINE (AJOL)
Abstract
The literary depiction of sex, and by extension pornography, in early modern
Caribbean literature has been neglected by literary academicians. Using Susan
Sontag’s theorisation of the pornographic imagination, this paper analyses sex
scenes in Orlando Patterson’s The Children of Sisyphus in order to determine
whether or not they could be labelled as ‘pornographic’. The analysis is done with
reference to other pornographic texts and novelists from various time periods. The
link between literature and pornography is discussed and its relevance to the novel
under discussion explained. The sex scenes assessed are pornographic because of
the gratuitous nature of the sexual details which amount to a deliberate attempt
at sexually arousing the reader. Such gratuitous detail is evident in the obsessive
descriptions of the sex scenes, the use of fetish, and literary foreplay.
Description
CITATION: Dube, N. 2021. Patterson’s pornographic portraits: a deconstruction of the sex scenes in the novel the children of sisyphus. Marang: Journal of Language and Literature 34 doi:1816-7659/11/21/64-78
The original publication is available at: https://www.ajol.info/index.php/marang/index
The original publication is available at: https://www.ajol.info/index.php/marang/index
Keywords
Orlando Patterson, Caribbean literature, Susan Sontag, Pornographic imagination, Literary foreplay, Pornographic literature
Citation
Dube, N. 2021. Patterson’s pornographic portraits: a deconstruction of the sex scenes in the novel the children of sisyphus. Marang: Journal of Language and Literature 34 doi:1816-7659/11/21/64-78