Dominic Janes
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226358642
- eISBN:
- 9780226396552
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226396552.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
Lawyers representing Oscar Wilde claimed that the Marquess of Queensberry had libelled their client by scrawling a phrase on a card that the latter had left at the Albemarle Club in London. At the ...
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Lawyers representing Oscar Wilde claimed that the Marquess of Queensberry had libelled their client by scrawling a phrase on a card that the latter had left at the Albemarle Club in London. At the ensuing trial this was taken to refer to posing as a sodomite. This implies that there was an identifiable way in which to behave and appear in public life as a being sexually interested in other men. But what then what did sodomites look like? And has the role of Wilde been over-emphasised? This study asks whether his example should be appreciated not so much for having revolutionised the ability of such men to appear visible to each other as for having made the general public think that they knew how to recognise a sexual deviant on the spurious grounds that all homosexuals were like Wilde. The implication of this is that this period may have seen not so much the creation of a social identity for men who desired sex with men as the crude imposition of a stereotype upon them. These concepts are explored through case studies of the interactions of dandyism and caricature in the construction of queer forms of masculinity from the mid-Georgian to the late Victorian periods.Less
Lawyers representing Oscar Wilde claimed that the Marquess of Queensberry had libelled their client by scrawling a phrase on a card that the latter had left at the Albemarle Club in London. At the ensuing trial this was taken to refer to posing as a sodomite. This implies that there was an identifiable way in which to behave and appear in public life as a being sexually interested in other men. But what then what did sodomites look like? And has the role of Wilde been over-emphasised? This study asks whether his example should be appreciated not so much for having revolutionised the ability of such men to appear visible to each other as for having made the general public think that they knew how to recognise a sexual deviant on the spurious grounds that all homosexuals were like Wilde. The implication of this is that this period may have seen not so much the creation of a social identity for men who desired sex with men as the crude imposition of a stereotype upon them. These concepts are explored through case studies of the interactions of dandyism and caricature in the construction of queer forms of masculinity from the mid-Georgian to the late Victorian periods.
Dominic Janes
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226250618
- eISBN:
- 9780226250755
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226250755.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
The book explores the British cultural tradition of queer martyrdom that originated in the Roman and Anglican Catholic Revivals of the nineteenth century. As a devotional practice this centred on the ...
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The book explores the British cultural tradition of queer martyrdom that originated in the Roman and Anglican Catholic Revivals of the nineteenth century. As a devotional practice this centred on the envisioning of Christ as an unmarried, suffering, beautiful, queer martyr. Those who wished to purge their own sinful desires and live eternally with Him could seek idealised visions of His eroticisable body in the Mass as the reward for a life of arduous devotion. Men with such tastes might band together in communities of the like-minded. Others, who appreciated the homoerotic potential of such worship but who could not cope with the limits on lives in the Christian closet and who yearned for a wider public witness of sexual preferences rather than of self-denial, moved increasingly to alternative forms of self-expression, many of them rooted in socialism. Such people could then use queer aspects of ecclesiastical style as elements of camp or pastiche. Others remained within the space of the Churches and established a discrete niche within society sustained by their own visions of queer pain and delight. This last phenomenon helps to explain the role of the post-war Anglican Church in being instrumental in helping to bring about the partial decriminalisation of homosexual relations in England in 1967. Many in the gay liberation movement subsequently rejected the heritage of religion and yet, with tragic irony, the experience of AIDS gave a renewed prominence to older, queer traditions that were rooted in the aestheticized endurance of suffering.Less
The book explores the British cultural tradition of queer martyrdom that originated in the Roman and Anglican Catholic Revivals of the nineteenth century. As a devotional practice this centred on the envisioning of Christ as an unmarried, suffering, beautiful, queer martyr. Those who wished to purge their own sinful desires and live eternally with Him could seek idealised visions of His eroticisable body in the Mass as the reward for a life of arduous devotion. Men with such tastes might band together in communities of the like-minded. Others, who appreciated the homoerotic potential of such worship but who could not cope with the limits on lives in the Christian closet and who yearned for a wider public witness of sexual preferences rather than of self-denial, moved increasingly to alternative forms of self-expression, many of them rooted in socialism. Such people could then use queer aspects of ecclesiastical style as elements of camp or pastiche. Others remained within the space of the Churches and established a discrete niche within society sustained by their own visions of queer pain and delight. This last phenomenon helps to explain the role of the post-war Anglican Church in being instrumental in helping to bring about the partial decriminalisation of homosexual relations in England in 1967. Many in the gay liberation movement subsequently rejected the heritage of religion and yet, with tragic irony, the experience of AIDS gave a renewed prominence to older, queer traditions that were rooted in the aestheticized endurance of suffering.
Dominic Janes
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226358642
- eISBN:
- 9780226396552
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226396552.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
What divided the two sides in Oscar Wilde's trial was not the question of whether Wilde was a sodomite but whether it mattered that people could appear to be sodomites. On the one hand, it could be ...
More
What divided the two sides in Oscar Wilde's trial was not the question of whether Wilde was a sodomite but whether it mattered that people could appear to be sodomites. On the one hand, it could be held that sodomy was so obscene that it should be kept from public attention completely. On the other, it might be felt that intimations of sodomy were simply part of the amusing spectacle of sophisticated life. Flirting with the appearance of sodomy was not uncommon in the century leading up to the trial, and it was not the same as proud affirmation, as it had to take place in the context of the threat of public denunciation. Wilde’s public image was prefigured in a ribald, satirical tradition since the eighteenth century, which associated dandified performances with sodomitical desires. In a cultural climate of linguistic insufficiency, expression of same-sex desire had become coded through combinations of suggestive gesture, wordplay, clothing, and demeanor. For this reason, the year 1895 did not see the creation of a homosexual identity but rather the distribution of an image of the effeminate pervert that was to become a dominant stereotype of the homosexual for much of the twentieth century.Less
What divided the two sides in Oscar Wilde's trial was not the question of whether Wilde was a sodomite but whether it mattered that people could appear to be sodomites. On the one hand, it could be held that sodomy was so obscene that it should be kept from public attention completely. On the other, it might be felt that intimations of sodomy were simply part of the amusing spectacle of sophisticated life. Flirting with the appearance of sodomy was not uncommon in the century leading up to the trial, and it was not the same as proud affirmation, as it had to take place in the context of the threat of public denunciation. Wilde’s public image was prefigured in a ribald, satirical tradition since the eighteenth century, which associated dandified performances with sodomitical desires. In a cultural climate of linguistic insufficiency, expression of same-sex desire had become coded through combinations of suggestive gesture, wordplay, clothing, and demeanor. For this reason, the year 1895 did not see the creation of a homosexual identity but rather the distribution of an image of the effeminate pervert that was to become a dominant stereotype of the homosexual for much of the twentieth century.
Dominic Janes
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226358642
- eISBN:
- 9780226396552
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226396552.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This book concludes by reviewing concisely the key issues from the later eighteenth to the later nineteenth centuries and setting out the wider implications for the future study not simply of ...
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This book concludes by reviewing concisely the key issues from the later eighteenth to the later nineteenth centuries and setting out the wider implications for the future study not simply of caricature and fashion, but also of the role of visual culture in the construction of the sodomite as the posing precursor to the twentieth-century image of the homosexual.Less
This book concludes by reviewing concisely the key issues from the later eighteenth to the later nineteenth centuries and setting out the wider implications for the future study not simply of caricature and fashion, but also of the role of visual culture in the construction of the sodomite as the posing precursor to the twentieth-century image of the homosexual.
