Modernist writings have always been hailed for its nuanced relationship with sexuality. This paper looks at the ways E.M. Forster, one of the modernist writers on the fringes, deals with the discourses of sexuality different in ways different from other high modernists against the backdrop of the socio-cultural milieu which was extremely intolerant to homosexuality through his novel Maurice, written in 1913-14 and published posthumously in 1971. To what extent Forster’s homosexuality and his novel on same sex love negotiate with other homosexual writers and activists of the period? The mere fact that Maurice was published posthumously shows the grim situation of homosexual men and women of the time. Now our job is to closely look at the novel and situate its transgressions and liberation in the larger context of same-sex writings of the early twentieth century.
In Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Brown (1924), Virginia Woolf remarked: “…on or about 1910, human character changed” (4). Going by this classic definition of modernism, we can locate E.M. Forster’s Maurice in the Modernist canon. In fact, out of his total seven novels, four were already written before 1910. Unlike the other modernist novels, Maurice does not experiment much with language, form or style. However, its modernist ethos lies in its transgressiveness – dealing with homosexual themes in the way Oscar Wilde anticipated modernism in the previous century. Michel Foucault in his essay “A Preface to Transgression” writes: “the whole of modern thought is imbued with the necessity of thinking the unthought…for modern thought, no morality is possible” (qtd. in Tambling 4). It is hereby interesting to look at Forster, a homosexual author, and his novel Maurice which raises and/o...
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... Cambride UP. 2007. 245-248. Print.
Leavitt, David. Introduction. Maurice. Forster. England: Penguin Books. 2005. xi-xxxvi. Print.
Linder, Douglas O. The Trials of Oscar Wilde: An Account. Web. 20 Nov 2012. http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/wilde/wildeaccount.html Martin, Robert K. ‘Edward Carpenter and the Double Structure of Maurice.’ New Casebooks: E.M. Forster. Ed. Jeremy Tambling. London: Macmillan Press. 1995. 100-114. Print.
Maurice. Ivory, James, dir. Cinecom Pictures. 1987. Film.
Smith, David. ‘Lesbian Novel was danger to Nation.’ Sunday 2 January 2005. The Guardian. Web. 20 Nov 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jan/02/books.gayrights
Tambling, Jeremy. Introduction to New Casebooks: E.M. Forster. London: Macmillan Press. 1995. 1-12. Print.
Woolf, Virginia. Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Brown. London: Leonard and Viginia Woolf.
As previously stated, John Knowles’s A Separate Peace has been challenged in a number of different places for a variety of reasons. Graphic language and explicit homosexual content are perhaps among the most well-known reasons cited for the challenge of the book.
homosexual liberation. Some have demonstrated their anger and concerns about prejudice against homosexuals in both riots and artistic forms. Therefore, these people seek to prove to the heterosexual world that homosexual ‘deviancy’ was a myth.
Seidman, Steven. Beyond the Closet: The Transformation of Gay and Lesbian Life. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print
I decided to focus my paper on the first volume, the most mentioned and most known, which is a deep analysis of the last two centuries of history of sexuality, particularly oriented in finding out why and how sexuality is an object of discussion. Foucault is not interested in sexuality itself, but he is interested in how it has become an object of knowledge. Why, in the past few centuries, have we increasingly come to see our identity as bound with our sexuality?
...n Duberman, and Martha Vicinus, eds. Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay & Lesbian past. New York: Penguin Group, 1990.
Irigaray, Luce. “That Sex Which is Not One.” The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston: Bedford Books, 1998. 1467-1471.
Collins, Angus P. "F. Scott Fitzgerald: Homosexuality and the Genesis of Tender Is the Night." Journal of Modern Literature 13.1 (Mar. 1986): 167-171. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Kathy D. Darrow. Vol. 280. Detroit: Gale, 2013. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.
Tatchell, Peter (1992). Europe in the Pink: Lesbian and Gay Equality in the New Europe. London: GMP.
“What makes for a livable world?”, and what constitutes the human?”, are two questions Judith Butler inquires in her opening paragraph and throughout her writing that determine the mindsets of individuals throughout our society. Both of these arguments are answered differently, by different persons, within different cultures, yet play a dramatic role in Butler’s view of herself, the LGBT community, and most of all, every other human
Halperin, David. "Is There a History of Sexuality?." The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. Ed. Henry
Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. "Un-Utterable Longing: The Discourse of Feminine Sexuality in The Awakening." Studies in American Fiction 24.1 (Spring 1996): 3-23. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 127. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 May 2014.
This essay will analyze and critique Michel Foucault’s (1984) essay The Use of Pleasure in order to reveal certain internal weaknesses it contains and propose modifications that would strengthen his reading of sexuality as a domain of moral self-formation. In order to do so, it will present a threefold critique of his work. Firstly, it will argue that that his focus on solely the metric of pleasure divorced from its political manifestations underemphasizes state power as a structuring principle of sexuality. Secondly, it will posit that his attention to classical morality privileges written works by male elites and fails to account for the subtexts that would demonstrate other forms of morality. Finally, it will argue that the nature of actors’ resistance to moral codes, explicated through Butler’s concept of iterability and signification, is an important factor that should also be considered. As a result of this critique, this essay
A critical analysis of Oscar Wildes only novel would yield that it is in fact a homosexual allegory of doomed, forbidden passion. The relationship between Lord Henry and Dorian, as well as Basil and Dorian is, clearly Homoerotic and must’ve shocked Victorian society.
Stein, Edward. The Mismeasure of Desire: The Science, Theory, and Ethics of Sexual Orientation. New York, NY: Oxford UP, 1999. Print. 20 Oct. 2011
Michael Levenson said in The Cambridge Companion to Modernism that Modernism fiction was “involved in the radical modern departure, across all of the arts, from representational verisimilitudei”. It was stylistically and thematically focused on rebellion against the way art was presented in the past and what its main focus was.