Gay Men's Literature in the Twentieth Century

by Lilly, Mark

• ISBN13: 9780814750810
• ISBN10: 0814750818
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-11-01
• Publisher: New York Univ Pr

Summary

Mainstream academic criticism has usually failed to engage gay work without distorting or ignoring its most central features. In gay men's writing, tenderness lies side by side with rage, and existential rejection of convention rubs shoulders with sexual hedonism. This groundbreaking work takes us on an unprecedented tour--in clear, lively, and non-technical language--of classic and little-known texts from the perspective of gay experience, sensibility, and desire.Beginning with Wilde's and Byron's existentialist outlaw, the theme of social rebellion and the fight against conformity forms a common link among the literary works of the twentieth century.Gay Men's Literature in the Twentieth Centurypresents us with a unified analysis of these, and other, shared themes in the works of James Baldwin, Christopher Isherwood, Tennessee Williams, Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, E. M. Forster, Jean Genet, Joe Orton, Andrew Holleran, David Leavitt, and Constantine Cavafy, and in the love poetry of the first world war. This is the most unified treatment of gay men's writing to date, written to appeal to the general reader, but based on scholarship so original that it is vital reading for anyone interested in gay studies and gender studies.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Homophobic Academy	p. 1
The Legacy of Byron and Wilde	p. 15
The Poems of Constantine Cavafy	p. 33
E. M. Forster: Maurice	p. 53
The Love Poetry of the First World War	p. 64
Jean Genet: The Autobiographical Works	p. 83
The Plays of Tennessee Williams	p. 105
Yukio Mishima: Confessions of a Mask	p. 127
James Baldwin: Another Country and Giovanni's Room	p. 144
The Plays of Joe Orton	p. 168
Christopher Isherwood: A Single Man	p. 180
Andrew Holleran: Dancer from the Dance and Nights in Aruba	p. 190
David Leavitt: The Lost Language of Cranes	p. 206
Notes	p. 220
Index	p. 230
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