Editing Cunt (section)

===Literature===

[[James Joyce]] was one of the first major 20th-century novelists to put the word "cunt" into print. In the context of one of the central characters in ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]'' (1922), [[Leopold Bloom]], Joyce refers to the [[Dead Sea]] and to {{blockquote|... the oldest people. Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more. Dead: an old woman's: the grey sunken cunt of the world.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.themodernword.com/joyce/joyce_paper_conley.html |title=Commentary on Joyce |publisher=Themodernword.com |date=1939-05-07 |access-date=2011-12-18 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111230070108/http://themodernword.com/joyce/joyce_paper_conley.html |archive-date=2011-12-30 }}</ref>}}
Joyce uses the word figuratively rather than literally; but while Joyce used the word only once in ''Ulysses'', with four other wordplays ('cunty') on it, [[D. H. Lawrence]] later used the word ten times in ''[[Lady Chatterley's Lover]]'' (1928), in a more direct sense.<ref>{{cite news|author=Doris Lessing |url=http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1819727,00.html |title=Review of "Lady Chatterley" |publisher=Books.guardian.co.uk |date= 14 July 2006|access-date=18 December 2011 |location=London}}</ref> Mellors, the gamekeeper and eponymous lover, tries delicately to explain the definition of the word to Lady Constance Chatterley: "If your sister there comes ter me for a bit o' cunt an' tenderness, she knows what she's after." The novel was the subject of [[R v Penguin Books Ltd|an unsuccessful UK prosecution in 1961]] against its publishers, [[Penguin Books]], on grounds of obscenity.<ref>{{cite news |url= http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,,367917,00.html|title= Cock-up and cover-up|access-date=6 March 2008 |work= The Guardian | location=London}}</ref>

[[Samuel Beckett]] was an associate of Joyce, and in his ''[[Malone Dies]]'' (1956), he writes: "His young wife had abandoned all hope of bringing him to heel, by means of her cunt, that [[Trump (card games)|trump card]] of young wives."<ref>{{cite book | title = Women in Beckett | year = 1990 | isbn = 978-0-252-06256-8 | publisher = University of Illinois | last = Ben-Zvi | first = Linda}}</ref> In 1998, [[Inga Muscio]] published ''[[Cunt: A Declaration of Independence]]''. In [[Ian McEwan]]'s novel ''[[Atonement (novel)|Atonement]]'' (2001), set in 1935, the word is used in the draft of a [[love letter]] mistakenly sent instead of a revised version and, although not spoken, is an important plot pivot.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.yalereviewofbooks.com/archive/spring02/review15.shtml.htm |title=Ian McEwan's Fictional Act of Atonement. |access-date=6 March 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080317055448/http://www.yalereviewofbooks.com/archive/spring02/review15.shtml.htm |archive-date=17 March 2008 }}</ref>

[[Irvine Welsh]] uses the word widely in his novels, such as ''[[Trainspotting (novel)|Trainspotting]]'', generally as a generic placeholder for a man, and not always negatively, e.g. "Ah wis the cunt wi the fuckin pool cue in ma hand, n the plukey cunt could huv the fat end ay it in his pus if he wanted, like."<ref name="mullan">{{cite news |last1=Mullan |first1=John |title=Trainspotting: dialect |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/may/31/irvinewelsh |access-date=1 May 2019 |work=The Guardian |date=31 May 2008}}</ref><ref name="Irvine Welsh"/>