Transgression and Redemption in American Fiction

This book considers modern American fiction in its own Italianate coloration: the interplay of sex (the red of passion), violence (the black of violence), and sanctity (the gold of redemption). Its purpose is to involve readers in the mythopoetics of American narrative, long-lived and well overdue, in which Marian Catholicism is seen as integral to apprehending the nexus among eros, grace, and sacrifice in U.S. self-making—especially for Protestants! It starts with Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the primary instigator, as well as with Frederic’s ingenious retelling, The Damnation of Theron Ware, a second persisting prism. Sustained revisionist accounts of five major novels and several stories follow, including Chopin’s The Awakening, James’ The Wings of the Dove, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Cather’s The Professor’s House, and Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Each novel is recalled as a melodrama of beset sexuality and revealed as a martyr tale of forbidden love—successive, self-aware courtings of devotional Catholicism that the critical and teaching establishment has found too mysterious and dangerous to recognize, never mind sanction. In counterpoint, the book illuminates each tale in its own terms, which are often surprising yet almost always common-sensical; it identifies the special senses—beauty, courage, and wisdom—that emerge, often in the face of social terror and moral darkness, under Marian-Catholic pedagogy; and it yields an overview of the mainline of the modern American novel in which sexual transgression (including betrayal) and graced redemption (the sanctification of passion, mediated confession, martyring sacrifice) go hand in hand, syncretically.

Introduction

To make sense of the presence of Catholic devotionalism in America’s putatively Protestant mainstream fiction, the Introduction recovers the mythopoetic criticism of Leslie A. Fiedler’s Love and Death in the American Novel, long-remembered only in gender and racial terms, to marshal his distinction between Protestant sentimentalism, in which Pauline anti-sexuality yields sexless households and male bonding, and the sanctification of passion in the Catholic Mediterranean, which re-sexualizes Mary and compulsively seeks redemption in transgression. Whereas Fiedler assumed that Roman Catholicism lost the literary battle for the American psyche, Transgression & Redemption argues that “the Protestant temptation to Marian Catholicism” anticipated by Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter really gets going by century’s end and culminates in the great American modern(ist) novels of the 1920s. It begins by identifying the core storytelling that dissents from Emersonian transcendentalism and that has dominated America’s novelistic canon since its inception: what a previous generation identifies as “melodramas of beset sexuality” that must now be seen, in a return to religious accountability, as martyr tales of forbidden love. Then the big reveal: it turns out that where there is sexual transgression in the American canon, there are almost always signs of redemption—and those signs are themselves almost always Catholic. The introduction proceeds from recent critical trends to outline further crucial changes in reading practices—leveraging female devotions against male delusion, thinking both/and instead of either/or, cultivating material immanence over transcendental symbolism—that prepare the way for comprehending the once-and-still-fearful religious Other central to the American literary imagination.

Anusocratie? Freemasonry, sexual transgression and illicit enrichment in postcolonial Africa

Cameroonians recently invented a new word to characterize the state of their country: anusocratie (the rule of the anus). This became central in the moral panic from 2000 onwards over a supposed proliferation of homosexuality. Anusocratie links such same-sex practices to illicit enrichment by the national elites and their involvement with secret associations of Western provenance, such as Freemasonry, Rosicrucians and the Illuminati. This article tries to unravel this conceptual knot of homosexuality, the occult (Freemasonry) and illicit enrichment: first, by historicizing it. Of interest in the Cameroonian case is the fact that a similar link is mentioned in one of the first ethnographies, Günther Tessmann's Die Pangwe. Freemasonry is clearly a colonial imposition on the country, but the link between same-sex practices and enrichment has a longer history. Second, a comparison with similar ideas elsewhere on the continent can also open up wider perspectives. The link with illicit enrichment does not figure in classical conceptions of ‘homosexuality’ as developed in Europe, yet it strongly emerges from examples from all over Africa. Both Achille Mbembe and Joseph Tonda show that this image of the anus – anal penetration – articulates popular concerns about staggering inequalities. Yet, this aspect is ignored in debates about growing ‘homophobia’ in Africa. A confrontation with classical texts from Western queer theory (Bersani, Mieli) can help us discover other layers in African discourses, notably an emphasis on sexual diversity as an answer to homophobia. It can also serve to relativize the linking of sexual practices to sexual identities, which is still seen as self-evident in much queer theory of Western provenance.

The Reputation of Edward II, 1305–1697

During his lifetime and the four centuries following his death, King Edward II (1307-1327) acquired a reputation for having engaged in sexual and romantic relationships with his male favourites, and having been murdered by penetration with a red-hot spit. This book provides the first account of how this reputation developed, providing new insights into the processes and priorities that shaped narratives of sexual transgression in medieval and early modern England. In doing so, it analyses the changing vocabulary of sexual transgression in English, Latin and French; the conditions that created space for sympathetic depictions of same-sex love; and the use of medieval history in early modern political polemic. It also focuses, in particular, on the cultural impact of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II (c.1591-92). Through such close readings of poetry and drama, alongside chronicle accounts and political pamphlets, it demonstrates that Edward’s medieval and early modern afterlife was significantly shaped by the influence of literary texts and techniques. A ‘literary transformation’ of historiographical methodology is, it argues, an apposite response to the factors that shaped medieval and early modern narratives of the past.

Introduction

This introduction discusses the reputation of King Edward II (1307–1327) in medieval and early modern England, and the implications of this reputation beyond its immediate relevance to scholars of Edward II’s reign and afterlife: as a case study for the history of sex and the changing vocabulary of sexual transgression; as a source of positive depictions of love between men; as a paradigmatic exemplum for discussions of favouritism and deposition, and thereby a case study providing insight into the early modern use of medieval history; as a means of developing our understanding of literary texts such as Marlowe’s Edward II; and as a process that illuminates the literary nature of medieval and early modern historical narratives.

From Goats to Ganymedes

This chapter provides the first scholarly assessment of how Edward II developed a reputation for having engaged in sexual relationships with his male favourites. Edward’s reputation for non-specific sexually transgressive behaviour developed during his reign; however, the first writer to explicitly state that this transgression constituted sex with men was Christopher Marlowe. Following the publication of Marlowe’s Edward II, discourse concerning Edward and his favourites in texts of all genres shifted towards consensus that their relationships were sexual. As well as documenting the cumulative process by which narratives of sexual transgression were shaped, this chapter provides new insights into the significance of Marlowe’s work, and into the ways in which drama as a genre enabled his historiographical innovation.

Locker-Room Experiences Among LGBTQ+ Adults

Locker rooms operate as pivotal access points to physical activity across sports, physical education, and fitness facilities. However, locker rooms are predicated on cis-heterosexual assumptions that can be isolating to LGBTQ+ individuals. Using an online cross-sectional survey, LGBTQ+ adults (N = 1,067) were asked open-response questions about their past and present locker-room experiences. The resulting texts were independently coded by two researchers using thematic analysis and compared. All discrepancies were discussed with and rectified by a third researcher who acted as a critical peer. The results present distinct experiences across three intersecting aspects of embodiment: self-conscious—“I hate(d) being seen,” sexual transgression, and gender transgression. The findings provide insight into how harmful LGBTQ+ stereotypes influence locker-room experiences and support the redesign of locker rooms to challenge the binary organization of these spaces.