Henry James and Queer Modernity

Description

In Henry James and Queer Modernity, first published in 2003, Eric Haralson examines far-reaching changes in gender politics and the emergence of modern male homosexuality as depicted in the writings of Henry James and three authors who were greatly influenced by him: Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. Haralson places emphasis on American masculinity as portrayed in fiction between 1875 and 1935, but the book also treats events in England, such as the Oscar Wilde trials, that had a major effect on American literature. He traces James's engagement with sexual politics from his first novels of the 1870s to his 'major phase' at the turn of the century. The second section of this study measures James's extraordinary impact on Cather's representation of 'queer' characters, Stein's theories of writing and authorship as a mode of resistance to modern sexual regulation, and Hemingway's very self-constitution as a manly American author.

Eric Haralson is Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He has published articles in such journals as American Literature and Nineteenth-Century Literature, and has contributed to The Cambridge Companion to Henry James (1998). He is also the editor of the two-volume Encyclopedia of American Poetry (1998, 2001).

'... there are scintillating readings in Henry James and Queer Modernity, not least of Roderick Hudson, The Tragic Muse and The Ambassadors. These are combined with shrewd insights, considerable erudition and writing of rare panache.' Times Higher Education Supplement 'Brilliantly reasoned, witty and erudite study ...' The Henry James Review 'Henry James and Queer Modernity is inspired and essential for the way it makes James's sexuality not only a positive part of his signature aesthetic but a source of trenchant cultural critique beyond what we normally expect from him ... offers up an important theory of the relations among art, sex and politics.' Modernism/Modernity