Bakhtinian grotesque realism and the subversion of biblical authority in Rochester's sodom

Rather than signalling Rochester's agreement with the presumptive biblical imprecation against sodomy and consequent divine vengeance, the apocalyptic denouement of The Farce of Sodom bespeaks defiance of divine judgement and a willingness to persevere in the pleasure of homosexual anal sex despite what might seem certain divine retribution. A Bakhtinian reading of the play's carnivalesque features concludes that it is the failure of all sexual endeavor, rather than of sodomy per se, that is dramatized in the farce's concluding scene. Sodom anticipates both the modern attitude towards the open male body that has come to dominate 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.