Wilper Reconsidering the Emergence of the Gay Novel in English and German

Erscheinungsjahr 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61249-421-0
Verlag: Purdue University Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 214 Seiten

Reihe: Comparative Cultural Studies

In
Reconsidering the Emergence of the Gay Novel in English and German, James P. Wilper examines a key moment in the development of the modern gay novel by analyzing four novels by German, British, and American writers. Wilper studies how the texts are influenced by and respond and react to four schools of thought regarding male homosexuality in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first is legal codes criminalizing sex acts between men and the religious doctrine that informs them. The second is the ancient Greek erotic philosophy, in which a revival of interest took place in the late nineteenth century. The third is sexual science (or "sexology"), which offered various medical and psychological explanations for same-sex desire and was employed variously to defend, as well as to attempt to cure, this "perversion." And fourth, in the wake of the scandal caused by his trials and conviction for "gross indecency," Oscar Wilde became associated with a homosexual stereotype based on "unmanly" behavior. Wilper analyzes the four novels—Thomas Mann's
Death in Venice, E. M. Forster's
Maurice, Edward Prime-Stevenson's
Imre: A Memorandum, and John Henry Mackay's
The Hustler—in relation to these schools of thought, and focuses on the exchange and cross-cultural influence between linguistic and cultural contexts on the subject of love and desire between men.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wilper, James P.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

Note on Translations

Introduction

Part 1: Religion and Law

Chapter 1: Sin and Crime

Part 2: Greek Love

Chapter 2: Transcending Greek Love

Chapter 3: The "Manly love of comrades"

Part 3: Science and Sex

Chapter 4: The Highest Being Drawn Down into Decadence

Chapter 5: Health, Masculinity, and the Third Sex

Part 4: Wild about Oscar Wilde?

Chapter 6: A Tough Act to Follow: Homosexuality in Fiction after Oscar Wilde

Chapter 7: Das Bildnis des Oskar Wilde

Afterword

Works Cited

Index

Über Autor(innen)

James P. Wilper teaches literature at the University of Westminster. His interests in scholarship include twentieth-century and contemporary literature and culture, pre-Stonewall gay and lesbian novels, translation theory and practice, and film adaptation. Wilper's recent publications include articles in
Critical Survey,
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, and
Adaptation and in Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters across the Modern World, 1880-1930 (Ed. Heike Bauer, 2015).