Lesbian Modernism: Censorship, Sexuality and Genre Fiction

ISBN-13: 9780748693733 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014 / 224 str.

Elizabeth English

Opis

The first book-length study to explore the importance of genre for the body of literature we call lesbian modernism
Popular fiction is seen as a staple of late-twentieth-century and contemporary lesbian cultural production, but this has largely been perceived as a recent development. Elizabeth English breaks new ground by providing a kind of pre-history to lesbian cultural identity, where popular genre fictions presented an alternative creative strategy against censorship. The Well of Loneliness trial and consequent ban forced writers to question how they could and should represent the lesbian, and English argues that popular fiction played a crucial role in providing an alternative outlet for expression. This discovery necessitates a re-evaluation of what constitutes lesbian modernism and, by extension, introduces a hitherto neglected network of writers from diverse backgrounds who make an important contribution to the body of lesbian literature.
Key Features:
> Rethinks the lesbian modernist project to demonstrate that genre fiction not only influenced modernist writers such as Woolf and Stein but also found its way into their ostensibly highbrow work
> Brings to light hitherto neglected mainstream writers working in popular genres who contributed to a lesbian modernist aesthetic
> Situates Katharine Burdekin within the context of lesbian modernism for the first time, employing hitherto unseen archive material (including letters and manuscripts)
> Divided into three broad multi-author genres (fantasy, historical and detective fictions), the study covers popular fictions such as utopian and dystopian writing, the supernatural, historical biography, historical romance, and the classic country-house crime novel

Spis treści

List of Figures; Acknowledgements; Introduction, Elizabeth English, Jana Funke, Sarah Parker; Part I: Interrogating Lesbian/Queer/Trans Modernism; 1 Loving/Hating/Loving Lesbian Modernism, Jodie Medd; 2 Lesbian-Trans-Feminist Modernism: Christopher St. John, Trans Masculinity and Celibate Friendship in Hungerheart: The Story of a Soul, Jana Funke; 3 The Ontology of the Pluri-Singular Body in Natalie Clifford Barney’s The One Who is Legion or A.D.’s After-Life, Katharina Boeckenhoff; Part II: Genres and Forms; 4 Imaginative Biography: Margaret Goldsmith, Vita Sackville-West and Lesbian Historical Life Writing, Elizabeth English; 5 Modernism at the Margins: Mariette Lydis’s Print Portfolio Lesbiennes, Abbey Rees-Hales; 6 Inverting the Gaze: Radclyffe Hall and Male Sexual Identities, Steven Macnamara; Part III: Relationality, Networks and Kinship; 7 Writing Widows of Lesbian Modernism, Hannah Roche; 8 Lesbianism in/and the Family: Eva Gore-Booth and the Making of Feminist Modernism, Kathryn Holland; 9 Lesbian Joyce, Katherine Mullin; Part IV: Histories and Temporalities; 10 Elizabethan Lovemaking: College Romance and Queer Anachronism in Edna St. Vincent Millay’s The Lamp and the Bell, Sarah Parker; 11 The Lesbian Herstory Archives at Fifty, Robin Hackett; 12 Hidden in Plain Sight: The Reconstruction of Lesbian Modernist Sexual Histories, Jo Winning; Index.