Romantic Genius: The Prehistory of a Homosexual Role by Andrew Elfenbein (review)

Andrew Elfenbein. Romantic Genius: The Prehistory ofa Homosexual Role. NY: Columbia University Press, 1999. 262p. Petra Dierkes-Thrun University of Pittsburgh In his 1995 study on Byron and the Victormns (Cambridge University Press), Andrew Elfenbein argued that the 19th-century reception ofLord Byron helped create and disseminate a lasting image ofthe "homosexualized" genius. In Romantic Genius: The Prehistory ofa Homosexual Role, Elfenbein returns to the literary and cultural genealogy ofthis image with thequestion of"how genius and homosexuality came to be linked in the first place" (1). Central to Elfenbeins argument in this engaging and highly informative study is the contention that the Romantic concept ofgenius itselfrelied on the idea ofpersonal eccentricity, creative daring, and deviation from norms ofnot only social but especially sexual behavior: in other words, an intrinsic element of "queerness." Arguing that 18th- and early 19thcentury Romantic concepts of genius were implicitly associated with devious sexual behavior, often deliberately challenging contemporary codes ofsexual propriety and gender roles, Elfenbein traces the processes by which the fiction ofgenius became an important trope for the representation ofhomosexual "identity," and the perception ofhomosexual "character." Elfenbeins introduction and first chapter — an interesting overview of the 18th-century cultural climate in which notions ofeffeminacy, genius, and homosexuality started to coalesce — provide a carefully conceived theoretical framework for the following collection ofessays on individual figures and works. In six substantial chapters, the wide-ranging discussion oflesser-known figures such as Anne Darner and Anne Bannerman, semi-canonical writers William Cowper and William Beckford, and such literary giants as William Blake and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, illustrates convincingly the pervasive intersection between homoeroticism and the myth ofgenius, despite the fact that Elfenbein concentrates almost exclusively on the work of poets. Expanding and refining traditional analyses of genius that tend to gloss over lesbian history and achievement, Elfenbeins study also attempts a more even-handed discussion ofexamples oflesbian as well as gay representation in the cultural history ofgenius and homosexuality. It is important to note what Elfenbein does not do in this study: while never excluding the possibility of the homoerotic orientation of individual writers (of whose erotic life we usually know surprisingly little), he does not engage in an emphatic "gay heroes throughout history" approach. In fact, Elfenbein is at his best when weighing individual close readings ofthe figures and texts ofhis gallery of male and female Romantic geniuses against essentialist historicist impulses to MO * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW F FALL 2000 identify and recuperate gay and lesbian ancestors for the present. Juxtaposing the individualizing and the normalizing aspects ofgenius and gender socialization in such figures as Beckford and Cowper, or Darner and Bannerman, Elfenbein lays out the ways in which these writers were themselves ambivalent in their use ofthe rhetoric of"homosexualized" genius. For instance, while they sought to promote their own status as daring geniuses through homoerotic imagery in their work, Beckford's unabashed complicitywith an emerging consumer economy in Vathek and Coleridge's reliance on a generous annuity reversed and contradicted their posture as autonomous geniuses. Likewise, Anne Bannerman chose to exploit the rumors ofher lesbianism for her status as female genius, while Anne Darner countered scandalous accusations of sexual innuendo with a posture of the virtuous heterosexual aristocrat. These inconsistencies illustrate not only the paradoxical and sometimes ironic relationship between the concepts ofthe revered genius and the abject sodomite or sapphist, but also the contradictions inherent in 1 8th-century discourses ofgenius and an underlying cultural fascination with sexual and social expressions ofexcess and deviance. I found the broad cultural range that informs Elfenbeins study to be one of the most attractive aspects ofthis book. Together with very careful close readings of selected texts (among the better-known are Beckford's Vathek, Cowper's The Task, Blake's Milton, and Coleridge's Christabel), we also find incisive discussions ofthe 1 8th-century debates about consumerism, effeminacy and luxury; the relationship between the Burkean sublime and the conflicting gender models ofcivic and civil humanism; or the prejudices against female genius and the history of lesbian representation in pornography (as well as Bannerman's and Coleridge's departure from such models). Another important strength ofRomantic Genius are the sometimes surprising connections Elfenbein makes between 1...