Hell-fire Clubs [ Clubs & Societies / Association ]
… of Rabelais’ Renaissance epos, thereby also adopting Rabelais’s humanist ideal to justify their debauchery. The cellar-books are fragmentary but reveal that from 1760 onwards, members regularly checked out bottles of wine ‘for their private … 36). Additionally, they seem to have indulged in readings of satirical, occult, and pornographic literature, some of the books in the club’s library sporting ‘false bindings suggesting that they were prayer-books or collections of sermons’ (Ashe 124f). Dashwood’s anti-Catholic stance – four paintings exist of him that could be …
Blasphemy | Clubs | Masculinity | Sex
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