Objects of Affection? Materialising Courtship, Love and Sex in Ireland, c. 1800-1830.
Calvert, Leanne
(2022)
Objects of Affection? Materialising Courtship, Love and Sex in Ireland, c. 1800-1830.
Cultural and Social History, 19 (3).
pp. 247-263.
ISSN 1478-0038
This article uses a collection of mementos curated by Robert James Tennent, a middle-class man, to interrogate how objects materialised love and sex in Ireland. It problematises readings of courtship tokens as simple objects of affection, and considers how individuals engaged in culturally-sanctioned courtship practices in extra-licit ways. Gifts and tokens took on new meanings when they were accessioned into the personal archives of their owners and catalogued as mementos of past relationships. Read as a collection of courtship mementos and a homemade pornographic archive, this article argues that the collection provides an unique insight into the curation of sexual memory.
Item Type | Article |
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Additional information | © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords | courtship, ireland, emotion, love, material culture, sex, cultural studies, history, sociology and political science |
Date Deposited | 15 May 2025 14:45 |
Last Modified | 19 May 2025 20:47 |