Gender Protest and Same-Sex Desire in Antebellum American Literature
Regular price
€210.80
A01=David Greven
alix
Antebellum American Literature
antebellum cultural criticism
Antebellum Period
Author_David Greven
Benito Cereno
Book III
cabin
Category=DS
Category=DSB
Category=DSBF
Category=DSK
Category=JBSF
Category=JBSJ
Conqueror Worm
Dead Man
Diseased Penis
Disorderly Behavior
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Female Narcissism
fuller
gender identity studies
Gender Protest
Hester Prynne
Litchfield Female Academy
literary gender nonconformity
margaret
melancholia and sexuality
Melancholy Young Men
Melville's Depiction
Melville's Work
Melville’s Depiction
Melville’s Work
Narcissistic Woman
Nelson Monument
nineteenth-century American fiction
Phallic Feminine
Poe's Work
poes
Poe’s Work
queer theory
Red Burn
Red Roots
same-sex desire in classic literature
Scarlet Letter
Stowe's Portrait
Stowe’s Portrait
strachey
toms
uncle
Valerie Rohy
work
writing
Young Man
Product details
- ISBN 9781409469926
- Weight: 640g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 28 Feb 2014
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Expanding our understanding of the possibilities and challenges inherent in the expression of same-sex desire before the Civil War, David Greven identifies a pattern of what he calls ’gender protest’ and sexual possibility recurring in antebellum works. He suggests that major authors such as Margaret Fuller, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne consciously sought to represent same-sex desire in their writings. Focusing especially on conceptions of the melancholia of gender identification and shame, Greven argues that same-sex desire was inextricably enmeshed in scenes of gender-role strain, as exemplified in the extent to which The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym depicts masculine identity adrift and in disarray. Greven finds similarly compelling representations of gender protest in Fuller’s exploration of the crisis of gendered identity in Summer on the Lakes, in Melville’s representation of Redburn’s experience of gender nonconformity, and in Hawthorne’s complicated delineation of desire in The Scarlet Letter. As Greven shows, antebellum authors not only took up the taboo subjects of same-sex desire and female sexuality, but were adept in their use of a variety of rhetorical means for expressing the inexpressible.
David Greven is Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. His other books include The Fragility of Manhood, Psycho-Sexual, and Men Beyond Desire.
