In this Book
- Reconsidering the Emergence of the Gay Novel in English and German
- Book
- 2016
- Published by: Purdue University Press
- Series: Comparative Cultural Studies
-
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
summary
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.
Table of Contents

- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-x
- Note on Translations
- pp. xi-xii
- Introduction
- pp. 1-12
- Part 1: Religion and Law
- pp. 13-14
- Chapter 1: Sin and Crime
- pp. 15-48
- Part 2: Greek Love
- pp. 49-50
- Chapter 2: Transcending Greek Love
- pp. 51-70
- Part 3: Science and Sex
- pp. 89-90
- Part 4: Wild about Oscar Wilde?
- pp. 135-136
- Chapter 7: Das Bildnis des Oskar Wilde
- pp. 153-170
- Works Cited
- pp. 177-198
Additional Information
ISBN
9781612494210
Related ISBN(s)
9781557537317, 9781612494173
MARC Record
OCLC
949272962
Pages
280
Launched on MUSE
2016-09-10
Language
English
Open Access
Yes
Creative Commons
CC-BY-NC-ND