ABSTRACT This article employs close reading to explore the use of sodomy accusations in satires featuring William Pitt the Younger between 1784 and 1790. Drawing from civic republican rhetoric, Pitt's opponents accused him and his supporters of belonging to a sodomitical cabal that sought to undermine England through despotism, eastern luxury and moral corruption. Although these accusations were rhetorical, they reflected concerns about the malleability of race, sexuality and gender, suggesting that Englishness, masculinity and heterosexuality were dangerously fragile at a time when opposite sex attraction and clear gender distinctions were becoming increasingly important to English identity.
Mary Sanderson (Tue,) studied this question.