Infidelity

I ought to write an entry on this topic as it's on the module. Also, it's:

• usually the most popular topic for assignments
• among the most popular being bad activites, according to the first week confessions
• one of the commonest themes for fiction in all its forms, and that's what I'm meant to be teaching/researching/scholarising
• something that almost everyone has some experience of, from whichever perspective, and whether they know or not

But, I'm not sure that I have the intellectual energy to do it justice. As I don't want to go into personal details I'm just gonna waffle on a bit about what I think about enquiry into the topic, rather than the subject itself.

Infidelity (or adultery, if the partners are married) is, of course, a legitimate topic for academic enquiry. In social policy, it's a key factor in relationship and family breakdown; in psychology (or sexology, at least), there's an interest in examining why people seek sexual encounters elsewhere (assuming they can, if they wish, get it at home); in business studies, I expect that someone can prove that people spend more on Valentine's presents for their lovers than their spouses; in English, film, and media studies, it needs to be recognised as perhaps the most persistent theme in fiction, since the beginning of storytelling.,

Iconic adulterers: Aphrodite (married to Hephaestus, carried on with Ares - http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/AphroditeLoves.html); Abraham (married to Sarah, had a son with Hagar - http://dovepress.net/?p=926); Isuelt (married to Mark, does the dirty with Tristan (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375154/); Emma Bovary (if you don't know this one, then read the book. It's by Gustave Flaubert).

I wasn't at Yasemin's lecture as, for once, I had a better offer. To be more specific, I had an invite to the lauch of my mate Alan's first novel (http://www.tindalstreet.co.uk/books/indeterminate-creatures). Without giving away too much, it deals with adulterous desire as one of its themes. But that's not such a surprise, as so much fiction does!

The image is from this DNA testing site http://www.anylabsaustin.com/dna-infidelity.html, which will test for 'foreign' DNA on any item of clothing you send to them. I feel that "robotic semen extraction" might be mistaken by some clients.