BAKHTINIAN GROTESQUE REALISM AND THE SUBVERSION OF BIBLICAL AUTHORITYIN ROCHESTER SODOM

Rather than signalling Rochester's agreement with the presumptive bibl ical imprecation against sodomy and consequent divine vengeance, the a pocalyptic denouement of The Farce of Sodom bespeaks defiance of divin e judgment and a willingness to persevere in the pleasure of homosexua l anal sex despite what might seem certain divine retribution. A Bakht inian reading of the play's carnivalesque features concludes that it i s the failure of all sexual endeavor, rather than of sodomy per se, th at is dramatized in the farce's concluding scene, Sodom anticipates bo th the modern attitude towards the open male body that has come to dom inate contemporary gay discourse, and the transgressive uses to which modern writers have put the Bible by which they undercut its authority and the presumptive morality that it is otherwise used to sanction.