Review: Patricia Pulham, The Sculptural Body in Victorian Literature: Encrypted Sexualities (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020)

Abstract

Patricia Pulham’s The Sculptural Body in Victorian Literature: Encrypted Sexualities offers a fresh perspective on the erotic charge attributed to statues and sculptures throughout history. From Ovid’s myth of Pygmalion to the tableaux vivants of ‘living statues’ regularly performed on London’s music hall stages (p. 14), the study provides convincing evidence that the long-held erotic resonance of statuary is fuelled by a ‘tension between animation and stasis’ and its unique placement within ‘the liminal spaces between movement and stillness, life and death’ (p. 13).