Homoerotic Love Research Articles

“HIS TURN TO CRY:” TIBULLUS’ MARATHUS CYCLE (1.4, 1.8 AND 1.9) AND ROMAN ELEGY

This article rcsituates the Marathus cycle, unique in Roman elegy for its focus on homoerotic love, within its wider elegiac context, arguing that the poems may he read as an encapsulation of elegy as a whole. It focuses on the interchangeability of male and female roles to illustrate how the characters that populate these elegies both typify and reinforce the norms of Latin love elegy while nonetheless retaining the centrality of elegy’s male speaker.

Sócrates y el amor según Máximo de Tiro

Res_eng:The article focuses on the special relationship Socrates establishes with (mainly homoerotic) love, as stated by the Greek rhetorician Maximus of Tyre (2ndc AD) in four of his Dissertations (18-21), entitled Socrates’ eroticism.

Yosef Ḥayyim Brenner's <em>Mikan umikan</em>: The Telling of Trauma

The essay suggests a new reading of Yosef Ḥayyim Brenner's long story "Mikan umikan," written in Palestine in 1911. Deviating from previous readings, which have stressed national-social, philosophical, and existential aspects of this highly appreciated yet somewhat problematic text, it follows its intricate delineation of a personal plot of a painful loss. "Mikan umikan" is thus considered in terms of its impressive poetic achievement in creating a literary representation of trauma. Read in light of current trauma and literature discourse, it is shown to endow space and time to a missing part, an unspeakable "hole" in the narrative. A sophisticated manipulation of the story's diary format and a portrayal of two parallel, intertwined chains of repetitions are presented as the poetic means by which this goal is achieved. The trauma articulated is that of the protagonist's separation from an intimate male friend, toward whom he experiences ambivalent feelings of homoerotic love mixed with humiliation and aggression. On the basis of details related to Brenner's life during the time of publication of "Mikan umikan" (as presented by Anita Shapira in her biography of the author), and of information discerned from his intensive correspondence with various figures in the Hebrew culture arena of his time, this trauma is read as reminiscent of the author's separation from his friend and colleague, Uri Nissan Gnessin. Brenner's story therefore possibly provides a rare glimpse into the intriguing and largely enigmatic relations between these two giants of modern Hebrew literature.

W. H. Auden's Public Art: From Poetic Reticence to Operatic Performance

W. H. Auden brought the matter of the homoerotic love lyric into a public form in his mid-century operas. This article examines Auden's æuvre through the lens of performativity as various attempts to formalize a homoerotic identity. I argue that Auden's Augustan propensities in opera—his sense of opera as a repository of civic art and the high style—are more fully understood against the backdrop of the strategies of the performative love lyric. Reading the civic thematics of Auden's operas as part of an erotic project reveal libretti that implicate sexual with civic politics, thus queering the “high style.”

“Boulevard of Broken Songs”

“Boulevard of Broken Songs”

Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: “Boys’ Love” as Girls’ Love inShôjo Manga

Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: “Boys’ Love” as Girls’ Love in<i>Shôjo Manga</i>

The Conversation Behind the Conversation: Speaking the Unspeakable in Virginia Woolf

This article explores the unspeakable or the unspoken behind conversations in Woolf’s fiction, focusing particularly on homoerotic love. To this end, it examines in detail a scene from Between the Acts and one from Orlando, concluding that, particularly in Orlando, Woolf actively enjoyed circumventing the censorship she deplored elsewhere.

Looking Strategically: Feminist and Queer Aesthetics in Michael Field's Sight and Song

Ut pictura poesis. --Horace (1) If the lesbian sees the women, the woman may see the lesbian seeing her. With this, there is a flowering of possibilities. The woman, feeling herself seen, may learn that she can be seen; she may also be able to know that a woman can see, that is, can author perception.... The lesbian's seeing undercuts the mechanism by which the production and constant reproduction of heterosexuality for woman was to be rendered automatic. --Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality (2) IN 1892, COLLABORATIVE POETS AND LOVERS KATHARINE HARRIS BRADLEY AND Edith Emma Cooper, under the joint pseudonym Field, published Sight and Song, a collection of thirty-one picture-poems depicting paintings viewed during their travels to some of Europe's finest galleries. The paintings are both secular and sacred, most by Grand Masters of the Italian Renaissance. The poems lack fixed forms, although some can be described, like many of Field's other lyrics, as variations on the sonnet. The small body of critical study on Sight and Song asserts its artistic merit and importance in establishing the ontology and value of the picturepoem as a subgenre; and has observed that the text's explorations of female beauty negate traditional notions of space and temporality and negotiate dualities such as transience and permanence, pleasure and pain, emotion and intellect. (3) Yet most critics address their difficulty in discerning an overriding theme, especially since the poems are not organized by artist or gallery. In contrast, my discussion here begins with the observation that Sight and Song opens up space for something other than a traditional, phenomenological way of reading that assumes the stable essence of an object and universality of perception. Following Laura Mulvey's foundational theories about the problems and politics of feminist spectatorship, as well as Alexander Doty and David Halperin's arguments about queer-ing as a reception practice that perceives the world from an anti-heteronormative point of view, this essay posits Sight and Song as a series of resistant readings that critique Victorian ideologies regarding sex, gender, and aesthetics from what today might be called feminist and queer perspectives. (4) While Michael Field depict canonical paintings, the picture-poems refer to the paintings, along with related art criticism and history, in a way that reclaims previously objectified female images and resists contemporary notions of sex and gender. Thereby, I contend, these author-spectators who swore / Against the world to be / Poets and lovers evermore (5) challenge sexism and heteronormativity. This paper juxtaposes selected Michael Field picture-poems with both the original paintings and nineteenth-century discourse about the images, in order to examine the gaps between Sight and Song's interpretations and the other representations. Thus, I analyze how the picture-poems expose what Judith Butler would call the citationality of sex and gender, that is, the reiteration of a set of norms or laws that naturalizes the sex/ gender conventions being repeated or cited, and thereby dissimulates the fact of the repetition. (6) Notably, in considering the ways that citational discursive practices might subvert, rather than reinforce, ideology, Butler asks: What would it mean to cite the law to produce it differently, to 'cite' the law in order to reiterate and coopt its power, to expose the heterosexual matrix and to displace the effect of its necessity? (p. 15). The following argues that the queer-feminist aesthetic of Sight and Song provides a fivefold response to the spirit of Butler's question. The picture-poems: (1) criticize the silencing of the female model; (2) move female figures from margin to center; (3) celebrate women's autoeroticism and homoerotic bonds; (4) critique Victorian sex/gender ideology through the figure of the boy; and (5) code both male and female homoerotic love through the figure of Saint Sebastian. …

Essential Encounters by Thérèse Kuoh-Moukoury (review)

1 38Women in French Studies with the novel from 1879 on, and has been reproduced in this edition as well. It stresses the morality of the story, which could be expected coming from the author oíThe ExperimentalNovel who considered novelists as "moralistes expérimentateurs." Christopher Rivers' translation is superb: the text is easy to read, agreeable , captivating, and, at times, amusing. As he notes, he has tried to keep the theatrical tone ofthe original French and the page-turning nature ofthe novel. Therefore he has made it his priority to render its freshness and liveliness to the detriment of some stylistic anachronism or contemporary flair. As a result , his translation is different from previous ones as it is more modern. Besides the one published in Chicago by Laird and Lee in 1891, which he cites, another anonymous but less literal English translation does exist (Mdlle. Giraud, My Wife, by Adolphe Belot, London, Privately Printed for the Trade, n.d. - probably 1900-1909). A concise introduction by Christopher Rivers precedes the novel. It gives background information on the author's life, work and literary relationship with Zola. Rivers shows how the novel follows, but also differentiates itself from, the existing French literary tradition of representing lesbian love. He interprets the novel as less about homo-erotic love and more about the husband's discovery that his wife is lesbian, and shows how ironically the male/male intense but safe friendship prevails as embodying heterosexuality vis-à-vis a lesbian threat. It would be interesting, however, also to consider the ways in which power functions within the female/female relation. Finally, he explains the sociopolitical debate concerning religious versus secular education for young girls that took place when the novel first appeared. This re-edition and translation is most welcome. It can be used in courses focusing on 19th century history, and especially social history as Belot was known as a literary speculator who gave the public exactly what it wanted. Rivers' introduction gives the necessary and general background that will please any reader and its bibliography will satisfy the more erudite. Thérèse De RaedtUniversity of Utah Thérèse Kuoh-Moukoury. Essential Encounters. Trans, and Introd., Cheryl Toman. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2002. Pp. 60 and 58. ISBN: 0-87352-794-1 and 0-87352-793-3. $6.95 for each volume. Recently published in the Modem Language Association's Texts and Translations Series, Thérèse Kuoh-Moukoury's Rencontres essentielles and its translation in English, Essential Encounters, offers an interesting perspective on a woman's struggle with her role in life. Published in 1969 and set mainly in Cameroon, this ground-breaking novel tells of Flo's infertility, failed marriage , desire for love and approach to questions ofpolygamy. Kuoh-Moukoury's short novel, the first published by a woman from sub-Saharan francophone Africa, and translated here in English for the first time, has influenced a Book Reviews139 myriad ofCameroonian women writers. The author wrote the text to "inspire other women to write." Next to Calixthe Beyala's highly provocative C 'est Ie Soleil qui m 'a brûlée, published nearly twenty years after Kuoh-Moukoury's text, this novel pales in its social agenda. Nevertheless, its main character embodies an important transitional moment in the metamorphosis of the modem-day Cameroonian woman. Furthermore, remembering that Rencontres essentielles inspired Beyala's controversial text -to list one novel in a long list ofinfluences - attests to a profound evolution in the attitudes ofCameroonian women writers as espoused in their writings throughout three short decades. Kuoh-Moukoury's novel thus plays an important pioneering role. The beginning of the novel presents Flo's childhood, courting, marriage and the fateful day when she discovers she is infertile. The bliss ofher marriage quickly dissipates and Flo turns to a sorcerer and a herbal specialist to help her reproduce. When this does not yield the result she seeks, Flo stops considering a child as a solution to her marital woes. Once she asks her husband about his indifference towards her, he recognizes their troubles and proposes divorce. Flo is no less than overjoyed when a childhood friend reconnects...

Fixing the Gaze: Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et La Bête

C'est tres dur d'etre devant et derriere la camera. (Entretiens sur le cinematographe) Cegeste Ne vous obstinez pas, un peintre fait toujours son propre portrait. (Le Testament d'Orphee) Bien sur que les ouvres se font toutes seules. Qu'elles revent de tuer pere et mere. (Le Testament d'Orphee) The Poet's Legacy Produced in 1945-46, Jean Cocteau's widely acclaimed film La Belle et la Bete is based on the eighteenth-century fairytale by Madame Leprince de Beaumont, however Cocteau's visual masterpiece clearly has much greater depth. (1) The film has been the subject of many different critiques which have often centred on love and sexuality (DeNitto, Greene). Sylvia Bryant believes that woman is seen in terms of masculine desire (445), whereas Susan Hayward writes about the non-phallic perception of human relationships and homoerotic love (1996 47; 1990 127-136). (2) However perhaps the film's most fundamental issue, which has not been analysed, concerns the notion of representation, in particular the possibility of distinguishing between and art. Does the film show that fictional representation is nothing but a detour in which might ultimately reassert itself? Does reality or life simply lie outside the fictional representation? Derrida has addressed the notion of the border of the work in various texts (see 1978; 1980). In what way does Cocteau's film raise the question of the work and the limits of representation? To what extent might the poet's work be the expression of a force which can belong neither simply art nor life? I will focus on these issues, especially by examining the use of the mirror. Cocteau not only directed films and wrote screenplays, as in the case of La Belle et la Bete, but he was also a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, artist and actor who reflected on his art. Before concentrating on La Belle et la Bete, I will refer briefly certain aspects of Cocteau's work which are pertinent my analysis of the film. In a number of texts, Cocteau reworked the Orpheus myth according which the poet and musician Orpheus could bring his dead wife Eurydice back the upper world from hell, on condition that he not look behind him until they reached the sunlight. However he turned around and she was lost. Orpheus was finally torn apart (Graves 111-115). The protagonist of Le Testament d'Orphee is really not just the hibiscus flower, as one might be led believe at the end of the film, but the Poet. Cocteau's earlier film and play Orphee also concern the poet who, in accordance with the etymology of the word, does not simply write verse but is involved in creation in a more general sense. Through the focus on the poet, the work takes as its subject the making of the work. Cocteau himself plays the main role in Le Testament d'Orphee his voice is also heard narrating his films (3) or for example, in Orphee and on the radio as the voice of Cegeste. The question of an author or spectator's involvement in a work is addressed by Cocteau in his Entretiens sur le cinematographe. Cocteau considers that the work is not a means of evasion but rather one is invaded by it; similarly, one must speak not of inspiration but rather expiration: Je veux dire que l'inspiration arriverait du dehors, et il n'y a pas de dehors. C'est votre nuit qui parle, des choses en vous-meme que vous ne connaissez pas. Donc il y a expiration. (109, see also 87) The image of darkness is a potent one, as is that of the unknown, especially when it is not external but within. How might the poet's work be understood, more specifically the drawing of the self-portrait (4) in Le Testament d'Orphee if the notion of model is problematic? It would seem that it is the night or an absence which is ultimately in play in the poet's work, as represented in Le Testament d'Orphee by the striking image of the empty blackboard which the Poet magically rubs with a cloth to sketch a portrait. …

Pictures and Passions: A History of Homosexuality in the Visual Arts

This text presents an overview of gay art from the beginning of recorded time to the present: works about gay themes by identifiably gay artists or for gay patrons. Saslow carefully examines the classical world, in which homoerotic love was recorded, celebrated, and satirized in the visual arts, and he examines the ways in which the guilt-free acceptance and institutionalized dignity the Greeks accorded to homosexuality have persisted as a nostalgic symbol of lost arcadian ideals in nearly every later civilization.

The Warren Cup: Homoerotic Love and Symposial Rhetoric in Silver

An exquisite example of toreutic art of the early Roman Imperial period known as the Warren Cup has been largely neglected in the scholarly literature because of the controversial nature of its scenes of homoerotic lovemaking. This paper offers a new interpretation of the cup’s date, subject matter, function, and significance and considers for the first time the cup’s presumed lost mate and its possible imagery. The rhetorical and aporetic nature of its scenes, its intended audience, and the role of such cups in the intellectual discourse of the Roman banquet are discussed.

The Warren Cup: Homoerotic Love and Symposial Rhetoric in Silver

The Warren Cup: Homoerotic Love and Symposial Rhetoric in Silver

Dividing the Mind: Contradictory Portraits of Homoerotic Love in Giovanni's Room

Dividing the Mind: Contradictory Portraits of Homoerotic Love in Giovanni's Room