scholarly journals "Dynamite Scrupulously Packed": A Revaluation of Henry Blake Fuller’s Bertram Cope’s Year

2022 ◽  
pp. 158-178
Author(s):  
Nils Clausson
Keyword(s):  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Gay Liberation ◽  
Romantic Comedy ◽  
New Yorker ◽  
Comic Novel ◽  
Comedy Of Manners ◽  
Self Discovery ◽  
Gay Liberation Movement

The essay proposes a reinterpretation and revaluation of Henry Blake Fuller’s 1919 novel Bertram Cope’s Year and argues that it deserves permanent currency within the canon of gay fiction. My reinterpretation and revaluation of it is based on the premise that readings of it over the past 50 years (since Edmund Wilson’s 1970 essay on Henry Blake Fuller’s fiction in the New Yorker) have failed to understand its representation of homo-sexuality. Criticism of the novel has been based on post-Stonewall assumptions of what a 'gay novel’ should be and what cultural work is should perform. The post-Stonewall paradigm of the gay novel is that it is a coming-of-age story, a Bildungsroman, focused on a protagonist who, through a process of self-discovery, arrives at an acceptance and affirmation of his sexual identity. The prototype is Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story, with E. M. Forster’s Maurice a precursor. To appreciate Bertram Cope’s Year, we must, I argue, abandon post-Stonewall presuppositions of what we should expect from a gay novel. Bertram Cope’s Year is not a coming-of-age novel. Rather it is a comic novel formed from Fuller’s successful fusion and subversion of the romantic comedy, the comedy of manners, and the campus novel. Bertram Cope is a comic hero who ultimately triumphs over the efforts of a college town, presided over the matchmaking socialite Medora Phillips, to marry him to one of the three young ladies in her circle. He is rescued from this unwanted marriage by his boyfriend, who arrives to save him from the unwanted marriage. Fuller successfully exploits the conventions of the comic novel to tell a story that anticipates one of the aspirations of the gay liberation movement half a century later. As such, it deserves permanent currency.

Patterns: Rosamond Lehmann

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vike Martina Plock
Keyword(s):  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fashion Industry ◽  
To The Lighthouse ◽  
Fashion Magazines ◽  
Female Authorship ◽  
Rosamond Lehmann

This chapter analyzes the role of fashion as a discursive force in Rosamond Lehmann’s 1932 coming-of-age novel Invitation to the Waltz. Reading the novel alongside such fashion magazines as Vogue, it demonstrates Lehmann’s awareness that 1920s fashion, in spite of its carefully stylized public image as harbinger of originality, emphasized the importance of following preconceived (dress) patterns in the successful construction of modern feminine types. Invitation to the Waltz, it argues, opposes the production of patterned types and celebrates difference and disobedience in its stead. At the same time, the novel’s formal appearance is nonetheless dependent on the very same tenets it criticizes. On closer scrutiny, it is seen to reveal its resemblance to Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927). A tension between imitation and originality determines sartorial fashion choices. This chapter shows that female authorship in the inter-war period was subjected to the same market forces that controlled and sustained the organization of the fashion industry.

The Right to Dream: Gender, Modernity, and the Problem of Class in Kate O'Brien's Bourgeois Bildungsromane

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-289
Author(s):  
Naoise Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Class Status ◽  
The Right ◽  
Aristocratic Culture ◽  
Modern Form

Feminist critics have celebrated Kate O'Brien's pioneering approach to gender and sexuality, yet there has been little exploration of her innovations of the coming-of-age narrative. Creating a modern Irish reworking of the Bildungsroman, O'Brien's heroines represent an idealized model of female identity-formation which stands in sharp contrast to the nationalist state's vision of Irish womanhood. Using Franco Moretti's theory of the Bildungsroman, a framing of the genre as a thoroughly ‘modern’ form of the novel, this article applies a critical Marxist lens to O'Brien's output. This reading brings to light the ways in which the limitations of the Bildungsroman work to constrain O'Brien's subversive politics. Their middle-class status remains an integral part of the identity of her heroines, informing the forms of liberation they seek. Fundamentally, O'Brien's idealization of aristocratic culture, elitist exceptionalism and ‘detachment of spirit’ restricts the emancipatory potential of her vision of Irish womanhood.

Comedy, Class, and Nation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Tew
Keyword(s):  
Youth Culture ◽  
Public Life ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Cultural Narrative ◽  
Cultural Commodification ◽  
Comic Novel ◽  
Post War ◽  
Recurrent Motifs

This chapter studies the comic novel. If British and Irish culture in the post-war decades underwent some radical social and political upheavals, the novel registered and critiqued these transformations in part through the development of a particular comic mode. Comedy in British and Irish novels published from 1940 to 1973 often turned around the difficult intersection of class and nation. Alongside this overarching attention to class and nation, a number of other recurrent motifs can be traced in the comic novel of the period, such as the representation of cultural commodification, the decline of traditional values, and the emergence of new forms of youth culture. In the context of such widespread changes to the narratives that shaped public life, the comic novel expressed an ironic scepticism concerning the capacity of any cultural narrative to offer an adequate account of contemporary identities.

Queer Connections

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-279
Author(s):  
Lindsay Zafir
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Black Panther Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gay Liberation ◽  
Black Panthers ◽  
Coalition Politics ◽  
French Author ◽  
Gay Liberation Movement ◽  
Broad Scale

This article examines the gay French author Jean Genet’s 1970 tour of the United States with the Black Panther Party, using Genet’s unusual relationship with the Panthers as a lens for analyzing the possibilities and pitfalls of radical coalition politics in the long sixties. I rely on mainstream and alternative media coverage of the tour, articles by Black Panthers and gay liberationists, and Genet’s own writings and interviews to argue that Genet’s connection with the Panthers provided a queer bridge between the Black Power and gay liberation movements. Their story challenges the neglect of such coalitions by historians of the decade and illuminates some of the reasons the Panthers decided to support gay liberation. At the same time, Genet distanced himself from the gay liberation movement, and his unusual connection with the Panthers highlights some of the difficulties activists faced in building and sustaining such alliances on a broad scale.

scholarly journals Diving into the Subconscious of Women and Nature: Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing as an Ecofeminist Novel

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (10) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Hyma Santhosh
Keyword(s):  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Female Gender ◽  
Worth Living ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Life Worth Living ◽  
Female Community ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Rapid Industrialization ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Self Discovery

Woman and nature can be considered the best creations of god. Both together keep the earth alive and balanced through the process of creation. The male dominated practices have destroyed the nature as well as women. This paper deals with the different aspects of Eco-feminism through the novel Surfacing by Margaret Atwood. The narrator’s quest to the wilderness of Canada in search for her father which leads to a quest of self-discovery in the lap of nature becomes the major focus of this paper. The unknown protagonist becomes a representative of the entire female community. The realization that women are just an object to be conquered and violated by men is what leads to the ‘surfacing’ of the protagonist. In complete harmony with nature excluding clothes, language, food etc. the protagonist goes crazy which gives her more happiness that with her other relationships. The paper also tries to analyse the close relationship between women and nature and how the virgin nature and woman are destroyed by the invasion of the male community. Repressed gender roles, submissiveness, self-realization through nature and the challenges faced by women that are presented. The concept of women and nature as both victims of the male dominated society is also emphasized. This novel is the perfect literary example of an Eco-feminist work that portrays the destruction of women and nature even in the minutest episodes in the novel. Nature is a treasure-house of many myths that lay hidden in the beliefs, rights and rituals of the aboriginals which are passed from one generation to another. In the same manner women also are the sustainer's of many myths that the male society has made upon her. The mother i.e. both woman and nature is examined here.In a vast country like Canada,nature comprises to its majority through its wilderness.This wilderness hides many priceless virtues and knowledge that can be learnt only in complete harmony with nature.Surfacing is not just the journey of a woman but it is the quest that the female gender thrives for.This paper combines the theories of eco-criticism, eco-feminism and to analyse the novel Surfacing into a biological whole that merges nature, man and the beliefs of man that make existence meaningful and life worth living. In an era of rapid industrialization and materialism, it is necessary to go on a quest back to nature and learn how life was easier in the lap of nature. Great writers like Shakespeare,Chaucer and Wordsworth were able to carve out such master pieces only because of their relationship with the purest and virgin nature which is the greatest teacher for mankind of all times.

scholarly journals Surrounded by Spirits: Hauntings of Identity in Waimea Summer by John Dominis Holt

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-91
Author(s):  
Alexander Casey
Keyword(s):  
Native Hawaiian ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Queer Identity ◽  
Kanaka Maoli ◽  
Sodomy Laws

In 1976, John Dominis Holt published what would be considered the first novel by a Kanaka Maoli [Native Hawaiian] author in English, Waimea Summer. This coming-of-age narrative set in 1930’s Hawai‘i follows fourteen-year-old Mark Hull, a half White, half Kanaka Maoli boy who experiences a series of hauntings on his uncle’s farm, all the while grappling with a burgeoning queer identity and conflicted cultural loyalties. In the post American-occupied Hawai‘i, the teachings of Christian missionaries and anti-sodomy laws have all but eradicated the aikāne [homosexual] relationships practiced by the ali‘i [royals] of Marks’ genealogy, and yet the boy’s queer desires refuse to die. In this paper, the novel is interpreted through Laura Westengard’s theory of the queer Gothic, in which concepts of the American nuclear heterosexual family are challenged by the burgeoning past, thus returning the narrative and agency to the queer Indigenous subject.

Eugene Days

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Andrew E. Stoner
Keyword(s):  
Gay Liberation ◽  
Student Body ◽  
Liberation Movement ◽  
Gay Pride ◽  
Student Politics ◽  
Gays And Lesbians ◽  
Gay Liberation Movement

Shilts enrols at University of Oregon and quickly engages with the Eugene Gay People’s Alliance. Early attempts to start a gay liberation movement among Oregon students, including the university’s first-ever Gay Pride Week. He loses a later bid for Student Body President under a theme of “Come Out for Shilts.” Shilts embraces a “gay centric” approach to schoolwork and his life, living fully out despite some miscues, convinced heterosexuals are unaccepting of homosexuals because they lack understanding or knowledge of gays and lesbians. Oregon classmates recall Shilts’s transition from student politics to journalism. Shilts finds being “out” in conflict with his dreams of a career in mainstream journalism. Shilts writes about a summer job at a gay bathhouse.

Anita Bryant Leads a Moral Crusade

2019 ◽  
pp. 38-67
Author(s):  
Emily Suzanne Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Orange Juice ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Gay Liberation ◽  
National Brands ◽  
Political Roles ◽  
The Face ◽  
Evangelical Women ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Gay Liberation Movement

During the 1960s and 1970s, Anita Bryant made a name for herself as a former beauty queen, a pop star, and a spokeswoman for national brands including Coca-Cola, Tupperware, and Florida Orange Juice. She was especially beloved among evangelical audiences, who also knew her for her frequent publication of small volumes of personal memoir and spiritual advice. In 1976, her public image shifted dramatically when she became the face of a backlash against the emerging gay liberation movement, first in Miami and then nationally. Her story demonstrates how some prominent evangelical women transformed their celebrity into a political platform during the rise of the New Christian Right in the 1970s. It also highlights the strategies that these women used to understand and justify their political roles in light of their sincere commitment to conservative gender and family norms.

Coda

2020 ◽  
pp. 309-342
Author(s):  
Helen Moore
Keyword(s):  
Don Quixote ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Future Direction ◽  
The Many ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Taking its cue from the Victorian periodical debates characterizing realism as a crocodile and romance as a monster or ‘catawampus’, this chapter examines the role played by Amadis in early discussions of what the novel was, or should be; how it had developed; and where its future direction lay. For literary historians, Amadis constituted a bridge between the newly constructed ‘medieval’ and the emergent ‘modern’. Philosopher-theorists (Bakhtin) and novelists (Nabokov) alike continued to be fascinated by the relationship of Amadis to Don Quixote and its implications for theories of the novel. Novelists themselves (Bulwer Lytton, Ouida, and Thackeray) enlisted Amadis in their critique of modern masculinity. The final iteration of Amadis in English takes the form of chivalric compilations and abridgements for children; this concluding transformation proves to be emblematic of the many varieties of cultural work into which romance can be enlisted.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document