Queer Feelings: Love and Loss in the Letters of Horace Walpole

George E Haggerty

doi:10.3390/h10040108

Abstract

This essay looks at the letters of Horace Walpole through the lens of the contemporary performance theory of José Muñoz in order to suggest the ways in which Walpole’s feelings in the past reach us with a hope for the future. By looking at touchstones in Horace Walpole’s life, I look for a model of queer relationality that is centuries ahead of its time.

Highlights

In a proposal for a roundtable I proposed for an ASECS conference, I quoted from José Muñoz’s wonderful book Queering Utopia, in which he asks us to “look for queer relational formations within the social”
I am in awe of Muñoz’s “queer utopian hermeneutic”, and I would like to consider how it might disrupt the moral valence of feelings in the later 18th century (Muñoz 2009)
Muñoz talks about moments in poems by Frank O’Hara and James Schuyler as a way of getting at the queer utopian experience he sees in the everyday world

Summary

Introduction

In a proposal for a roundtable I proposed for an ASECS conference, I quoted from José Muñoz’s wonderful book Queering Utopia, in which he asks us to “look for queer relational formations within the social”. If this comes closer to an expression of the love between Horace and his friends, it can demonstrate how queer feelings can transform the world of the 18th century.

Results

Conclusion