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 Century" presents 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.
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Mark Lilly is Senior Lecturer at the University of Tunis and the editor of Lesbian and Gay Writing: An Anthology of Critical Texts.
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: Fair. No Jacket. Former library book; Readable copy. Pages may have considerable notes/highlighting. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 0.65. Seller Inventory # G0333494369I5N10
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Very Good. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Seller Inventory # GOR001269796
Book Description Soft Cover. Condition: Very Good. Uncreased spine. No ownership marks. xv, 233 pages clean and tight. This study of 20th-century-gay (male) creative writing was conceived from an anti-heterosexist viewpoint. Unlike much mainstream academic criticism, which has as its starting point the idea that homosexuality is sick and depraved, or both, Mark Lilly identifies society's homophobia as the central problem. In addition to an extensive opening chapter, analyzing the assumptions of conventional literary criticism, there are individual chapters on Cavafy, Forster, World War I poets, Genet, Williams, Mishima, Baldwin, Orton, Isherwood, Holleran and Leavitt. Seller Inventory # 145719