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

94 sion and broken promises. This is where Mr. Rose is most comfortable; the religion of his title is his weakest hand. Symbolizing the duplicity of the decade , the front cover and the last chapter present a well-known print,TheEmbleme of Englands Distractions. An enterprising printmaker adopted a common practice , replacing the original figure of Oliver Cromwell with William. This print not only played into the hands of Jacobite propagandists; it also symbolized the contradictory rivalries and partnerships that characterize the decade for Mr. Rose. Look, he says, at William’s‘‘internalcontradictions ’’ in policy: Cromwell had tried to ‘‘woo conservatives while at the same time protecting the radical sects,’’ and now William tried to do the same. Courting the Tories simply alienated the Whigs who should have supported him since the early 1690s. By about 1694– 1695 William had seen his error, but ‘‘the price of rapprochement with the mainstream of whiggery was the alienation of the Church party.’’ The lost opportunity was irrecoverable. Mr. Rose concludes thatWilliam’sreignresemblednothingso much as the return of the Cromwellian Protectorate and, like the Jacobites, he could be right. ANDREW ELFENBEIN. Romantic Genius: The Prehistory of the Homosexual Role. New York: Columbia, 1999. Pp. 288. $49.50; $17.50 (paper). Mr. Elfenbein’s provocative and rigorous book examines the complicatedmatrix between the ‘‘homosexual’’ and late eighteenth-century ideas about genius. Mr. Elfenbein does not focus only on the sodomite. His look at sapphists, such as Anne Damer and Anne Bammerman, illuminates his thesis: ‘‘The cult surrounding genius has created an analogy between the situation of the alienated, marginalized artist who rebels againstsocial norms by shattering conventional gender categories and that of the homosexual man or women in a homophobic world.’’ He examines ‘‘the general situation . . . about genius and homosexuality in the eighteenth century’’ and demonstrates ‘‘the effects of this situation on eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century writing.’’ There are original readings of Beckford , Cowper, and Damer. With Vathek, Mr. Elfenbein argues, Beckford ‘‘tossed taste, judgement, and heterosexuality to the winds in favor of rampant consumerism , boy love, and necrophilia.’’ Mr. Elfenbein looks at ‘‘the conditions that made the roles of genius and pedophile so closely intertwined for [Beckford]that neither could be said to have caused the other.’’ He points out the connection between genius, homoeroticism, and consumption and convincingly reveals how Beckford’s novel both challenges and undercuts mid-eighteenth-century notions of genius. Cowper, on the other hand, ‘‘demonstrated . . . a translation of the rebellious originality and autonomy of genius into the coziness of the domestic sphere.’’Hisworkexhibitsthelinkagebetween nineteenth-century concepts ‘‘of suburban homophobia and the domestication of genius.’’ In a powerful argument , Mr. Elfenbein says that Cowper ‘‘installed the structure of the closet atthe center of the middle-class suburban psyche in ways that made homophobia more useful than ever as a means of reinforcing the fragile borders of bourgeois masculine subjectivity.’’ Mr. Elfenbein’s fascinating analysis of the lesbian Anne Damer examines her art, her writing, and the way her contemporaries responded to her representation of ‘‘self-construction.’’ 95 Sometimes Mr. Elfenbein’s assertions go over the top (particularly in his chapters on Blake and Coleridge), but on the other hand, his geniuses here were often over the top themselves.Givenhiscareful criticism in the book, this conclusion seems schematic and hurried. His compelling book, however, shifts the way we look at gay and lesbian writers. Romantic Genius is among the bestofcurrentscholarship on the queer eighteenth century. Hans Turley University of Connecticut ALASTAIR HAMILTON. The Apocryphal Apocalypse: The Reception of the Second Book of Esdras (4 Esra) from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999. Pp. xii ⫹ 393. $85. Just in time for the new millennium (and the much anticipated doomsdayscenarios predicted long ago), Mr. Hamilton ’s authoritative study of the latest OT Apocrypha 2 Esdras (c. 90 A.D.), an exquisite expansion of his two articles on the reception of 2 Esdras, should arouse great interest among those who explore the rise and fall of eschatological literature , the philologicalchallengestotheauthority oftheBible, andthehistoryofbiblical hermeneutics. Mr. Hamilton stands on the shoulders of two eighteenthcentury giants, the German Lutherans Johann Albert Fabricius and Georg Serpilius , but weaves into his narrative his profound knowledge...