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

Contents:

• GAY LERATURE: POETRY AND PROSEGAY LERATURE: POETRY AND PROSE
• THE BOOK CLUB THAT HELPED SPARK THE GAY-RIGHTS MOVEMENT
• LGBTQIA: GAY FICTN & LERATURE
• GAY LERATURE

GAY LERATURE: POETRY AND PROSEGAY LERATURE: POETRY AND PROSE

Forster (A Passage to India, A Room Wh a View, Howards End) wrote the benchmark gay novel Mrice cir 1913, was published posthumoly a lh tale of manners, posn, and sire, the tular character meets and falls for his classmate Clive while at Oxford. The queer g-of-age novel about Jim Willard and his search for love was the first novel om a rpected wrer (Gore Vidal) to speak directly and sympathetilly about the gay experience an era when homosexualy was still very much taboo. The only novel by the great Osr Wil may not be overtly gay, but there's plenty of gay subtext there for the reful rear - about as much gay subtext as a popular thor uld get away wh 's iends Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotton exprs tense admiratn for his bety, and passag that show Basil's feelgs for Dorian as more clearly homoerotic were excised by an edor, acrdg to Nicholas Frankel, who eded an edn prentg Wil's origal text the text as origally published has referenc to Dorian's rptn of not only young women but young men: "There was that wretched boy the Guards who mted suici.

Integral to the lbian non (spe s beg nsired somewhat problematic) Brish wrer Radclyffe Hall's 1928 novel foc on Stephen Gordon, an upper-class lbian who dons men's clothg and be a novelist who eventually be a part of a lerary salon Paris at a time when there were no overt laws exprsly barrg homosexualy.

Hall's novel was groundbreakg her troductn of the views of "sexologists" Richard von Krafft-Ebg and Havelock Ellis, who posed that homosexualy was an born, unalterable tra that was nsired a ngenal sexual versn that simply meant a "difference" and not a fect. Dalloway, a novel to which Cunngham pays homage; mid-20th-century Los Angel, hoewife Lra Brown, disntented wh her life, nonts her attractn to women; and 1990s New York Cy, Clarissa Vghan, who is lbian, plans a party for her bt iend, wrer Richard Brown, a gay man dyg of AIDS. Numero anthologi of short gay fictn clu The Faber Book of Gay Short Fictn (1991), Pengu Book of Gay Short Stori (1994), Pengu Book of Lbian Short Stori (1994), the seri Men on Men (begng 1988) and Women on Women (begng 1990), and even an anthology of gay and lbian science fictn, Kdred Spirs (1984).

THE BOOK CLUB THAT HELPED SPARK THE GAY-RIGHTS MOVEMENT

The lerature of homosexualy has evolved to the pot where is often grouped not only acrdg to ethnicy and genre, for example, Lata and China, Ain-Amerin, Asian and Native Amerin, but also to sorts of sexualy, such as gay, transsexual, and bisexual not to mentn the lerary genr that reprent , cludg mystery, science fictn, and tective fictn, and even geographic regn. Categori: Gay and Lbian Novels, Genr Studi, Lerature, Queer Theory, Short StoryTags: Amerin Lbian Short Fictn, Amerin Lerature, Gay and Lbian Fictn, Gay and Lbian Stori, Gay Fictn, Gay Men’s Wrg, Gay Short Stori, Homosexualy and Lerature, Homosexualy Amerin Lerature, Homosexualy Lerature, Homosexualy Short Stori, Lbian and Gay Cricism, Lbian Short Stori, Lerary Cricism, The Bt New Gay Fictn, Them of Homosexualy Lerature.

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. The word “homosexual” was, fact, created the late neteenth century as an English equivalent for German Homosexualtät, which first appeared prt 1869 a pamphlet argug agast the Pssian legal that prcribed punishments for men who engaged same-sex relatns.

Adoptg his posn, crics have argued, for example, that Walt Whman and Osr Wil (1854–1900) were not, strictly speakg, homosexuals, at least the sense that medil and psychologil tablishments unrstood that “ndn” or “speci” the twentieth century. One rells thgs as var as Ernt Hemgway's dismissive attu toward homosexuals his books, the “pansi” played for lghs Hollywood films of the 1920s and 1930s, and Hart Crane's joyo announcement—havg, he believed, fallen love wh a woman—that he was not homosexual after all.

LGBTQIA: GAY FICTN & LERATURE

Although Amerin lerature the first two-thirds of the twentieth century almost always impli the medi-scientific fn whenever homosexualy enters the text, Whman had his own succsors, om Bliss Carman (1861–1929) and Richard Hovey (1864–1900) to Marsn Hartley (1877–1943) to Langston Hugh (1902–1967) and Gerr Lansg (b.

Sedgwick se Jam as a homosexual who rarely alt openly wh male timacy but whose work foc on “homosocial” (her term) suatns that occur when, for example, two men stggle for the attentn of a woman; emotns are directed by each man more strongly toward his petor than toward their shared object of sire. Although Sedgwick nsirs Billy Budd to be suffed wh homosexual sir, she pots out that there is only one homosexual the morn sense the story: Claggart, who has the self-loathg of those who have ternalized homophobia, and who is “praved bee he is, his sir, a pervert, ” or “homosexual” (Sedgwick, 1990, p. The many homosexual Amerin poets the early twentieth century who were athet clud Amy Lowell (1874–1925), Wilbur Unrwood (1876–1935), Donald Evans (1884–1921), Gee Sylvter Viereck (1884–1962), John Gould Fletcher (1886–1950), Clark Ashton Smh (1893–1961), and Samuel Greenberg (1883–1917), whose poems Hart Crane emulated his own early work.

GAY LERATURE

Public attus toward homosexuals are suggted by an cint the early 1940s when John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974), who had accepted a poem by Robert Dunn (1919–1988) for the Kenyon Review, whdrew his offer after Dunn published an say another journal on homosexualy.

Ransom plimented Dunn for havg taken such a bold stand—although actually the say is impartial, argug that homosexualy is no better, if no worse, than any other kd of life—but sisted that the poem schled for the Review might now be read as “homosexual advertisement” (Faas, 1983, p. 1928), and William Inge (1913–1973), and highly regard novels wh homosexual them and suatns, such as Two Ser Ladi (1943) by Jane Bowl (1917–1973), The Member of the Weddg (1946) by Carson McCullers (1917–1967), The Cy and the Pillar (1948) by Gore Vidal (b. The so-lled School of Boston, which provid one of the avant-gar's rpons the 1960s to the mastream works of Robert Lowell (1917–1977) and Sylvia Plath (1932–1963), was almost entirely gay, cludg such poets as John Weers (1934–2002), Gerr Lansg, and Stephen Jonas (1920–1970).

The gay liberatn movement and the gradual public awarens that homosexualy was not the disease the psychiatric tablishment had claimed led to a luge of “g-out” stori, which the thor narrat her or his progrs om “the closet” to an open life as a gay woman or man. Numero anthologi of gay wrg—Stephen Coote's The Pengu Book of Homosexual Verse (1983), Carl Morse and Joan Lark's Gay and Lbian Poetry Our Time (1989), and Edmund Whe's Faber Book of Gay Short Fictn (1991), to ce three of the most rpected—prent no evince that “gay wrg” is sentially more than wrg about gay life. 1965), refully documents a range of poetic tradns om the formalist to the highly experimental whout fdg any that grew om a basilly gay athetic: “Of urse there are poems that overtly flnt their sexualy, ” Liu nclus, “but there are so many quieter poems (and poets) who might elu the most fely tuned gaydar [sensivy to others' gay inty].