Gay Lerature: Poetry and Prose | Oxford Rearch Encyclopedia of Lerature

Contents:

• HOW GAY CULTURE BLOSSOMED DURG THE ROARG TWENTI
• GAY LERATURE: POETRY AND PROSEGAY LERATURE: POETRY AND PROSE
• REARCHERS REVER AN EARLY COPY OF A 19TH-CENTURY GAY RIGHTS ESSAY

HOW GAY CULTURE BLOSSOMED DURG THE ROARG TWENTI

His ma problem was that Queensberry’s allegatns about his homosexualy were te, and therefore uldn’t be judged the trial, Queensberry’s fense acced Wil of solicg 12 other young men to m sodomy. The fense also qutned Wil about the premise of his ntroversial 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, suggtg that Wil had ed the novel’s homoerotic them to sce Lord Aled. Osr Wil was tried for homosexualy on April 26, plead not guilty on 25 unts of gross a prelimary bail hearg, hotel chambermaids and a hoekeeper had ttified that they had seen young men Wil’s bed and found fel stas on his the trial, Wil was qutned extensively about “the love that dare not speak s name, ” a phrase om Lord Aled Douglas’ poem “Two Lov, ” published 1894, that many terpreted as a phemism for trial end wh the jury unable to reach a verdict.

But for the award-wng gay poet Doty, textual analysis of the great Amerin bard required a personal analysis, which necsated this kd of spirual ntact. By the mid-1920s, at the height of the Prohibn era, they were attractg as many as 7, 000 people of var rac and social class—gay, lbian, bisexual, transgenr and straight alike. The Begngs of a New Gay World“In the late 19th century, there was an creasgly visible prence of genr-non-nformg men who were engaged sexual relatnships wh other men major Amerin ci, ” says Chad Heap, a profsor of Amerin Studi at Gee Washgton Universy and the thor of Slummg: Sexual and Racial Enunters Amerin Nightlife, 1885-1940.

GAY LERATURE: POETRY AND PROSEGAY LERATURE: POETRY AND PROSE

By the 1920s, gay men had tablished a prence Harlem and the bohemian mec of Greenwich Village (as well as the seedier environs of Tim Square), and the cy’s first lbian enclav had appeared Harlem and the Village.

Each gay enclave, wrote Gee Chncey his book Gay New York: Genr, Urban Culture, and the Makg of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, had a different class and ethnic character, cultural style and public reputatn. Gay Life the Jazz AgeAs the Uned Stat entered an era of unprecented enomic growth and prospery the years after World War I, cultural mor loosened and a new spir of sexual eedom reigned. Though New York Cy may have been the epicenter of the so-lled "Pansy Craze, " gay, lbian and transgenr performers graced the stag of nightspots ci all over the untry.

”At the same time, lbian and gay characters were beg featured a slew of popular “pulp” novels, songs and on Broadway stag (cludg the ntroversial 1926 play The Captive) and Hollywood—at least prr to 1934, when the motn picture dtry began enforcg censorship guil, known as the Hays Co. ” The sale of liquor was legal aga, but newly enforced laws and regulatns prohibed rtrants and bars om hirg gay employe or even servg gay patrons.

REARCHERS REVER AN EARLY COPY OF A 19TH-CENTURY GAY RIGHTS ESSAY

In the mid- to late ‘30s, Heap pots out, a wave of sensatnalized sex crim “provoked hysteria about sex crimals, who were often— the md of the public and the md of thori—equated wh gay men.

” By the post-World War II era, a larger cultural shift toward earlier marriage and suburban livg, the advent of TV and the anti-homosexualy csas champned by Joseph McCarthy would help ph the flowerg of gay culture reprented by the Pansy Craze firmly to the natn’s rear-view mirror. Bisexualy has been viewed wh gay studi as distct om homosexualy, and bisexuals have found themselv exclud om gay events and anizatns although a great many “gay ins” om Socrat to Shakpeare to Osr Wil were married and fathered children. ” Further, even the word “homosexual” is ght wh problems: is often believed, rrectly, that origated as a medi-scientific term to classify homosexualy as a disease.