Late Style and Speaking Out: J. A. Symonds's In the Key of Blue

Abstract

This article examines In the Key of Blue (1893)—an essay collection by John Addington Symonds—as a case study in queer public utterance during the early 1890s. Viewed through the critical lens of late style, as theorised by Edward Said, the evolution of this project, from compilation through to reader reception, reveals Symonds's determination to “speak out” on the subject of homosexuality. Paradoxically, In the Key of Blue was thus a timely and untimely work: it belonged to a brief period of increased visibility and expressiveness when dealing with male same-sex desire, spearheaded by a younger generation of Decadent writers, but it also cut against the grain of nineteenth-century social taboo and legal repression. Symonds's essay collection brought together new and previously unpublished work with examples of his writing for the periodical press. These new combinations, appearing together for the first time, served to facilitate new readings and new inferences, bringing homosexual themes to the fore. This article traces the dialogic structure of In the Key of Blue , its strategies for articulating homosexual desire, and examines the response of reviewers, from the hostile to celebratory.