Romantic Genius - The Prehistory of a Homosexual Role

Surprisingly little has been written about homosexuality in British Romantic writing, and, similarly, little discussion has emerged about homosexual themes in the lives and poetic careers of the major Romantics. In Romantic Genius, Andrew Elfenbein explores the correspondence between the stereotypes applied to the "genius" and those applied to the homosexual, showing the centrality of disreputable desires to the works of Romantic male authors -- from William Beckford to Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Blake -- as well as to the writings of lesser-known but equally significant female authors of the period.

List of contents

1. The Danger Zone: Effeminates, Geniuses, and Homosexuals
2. William Beckford and the Genius of Consumption
3. The Domestication of Genius: Cowper and the Rise of the Suburban Man
4. Anne Damers Sapphic Potential
5. Lesbianism and Romantic Genius: The Poetry of Anne Bannerman
6. Genius and the Blakean Ridiculous
7. A Sight to Dream of, Not to Tell: Christabel, Pornography, and Genius

About the author

Andrew Elfenbein

Summary

Elfenbein takes on the absorbing subject of homosexuality in British Romantic writing, showing the centrality of disreputable desires to the works of Romantic male authors--from William Beckford to Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Blake-as well as to the writings of lesser-known but equally significant female authors of the period.

Product details

• Authors: Andrew Elfenbein
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 05.07.1999
• EAN: 9780231107532
• ISBN: 978-0-231-10753-2
• No. of pages: 288
• Series: Between Men--Between Women; Between Men-Between Women: Lesbian and Gay Studies; Between Men-Between Women: Lesbian and Gay Studies
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories