Read more
This book scrutinises the production and transnational distribution of sexological knowledge at the turn of the century. The works of three transnationally mobile authors are in the focus: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890/1891) and Teleny (1893) by, and attributed to, Oscar Wilde; 'The True Story of a Vampire' (1894) by Count Stanislaus Eric Stenbock; and Imre: A Memorandum (1906) by Edward Prime-Stevenson. The textual analysis is governed by references in all four works to Hungarian culture to demonstrate how they conceptualised 'Hungarianness' and same-sex desire simultaneously in the light of the new classificatory science of sexualities coming from German-speaking Central Europe. By foregrounding a timely literary angle and a 'culturalist' approach, this book offers non-Anglocentric insights, not bound by either language or nationality, to shed new light on the interdisciplinary reading practices of late-Victorian subjects and the ways they contributed to the emergence of fin-de-siècle queer fiction.
List of contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Homophilia and Hungarophilia
Chapter 1: (Con)texts of Same-Sex Desire: Medico-Legal Discourses and Literature
Chapter 2: Literary Snares in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Teleny
Chapter 3: Gothic Performance: Homophile Conceptual Muddle in Eric Stenbock's 'The True Story of a Vampire'
Chapter 4: False Snares and Sexology in Edward Prime-Stevenson's 'Homosexual Romance'
Conclusions and Afterword: Whatever Happened to Reading Hungarophilia Anthologically
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Zsolt Bojti is a senior lecturer in the Department of English Studies of ELTE Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest, Hungary) and is the editor-in-chief of the Department's scholarly journal,
The AnaChronisT. His research focuses on the intersection of nineteenth-century German sexology and the English literary history of sexuality at the turn of the century.
Report
"Zsolt Bojti's Queer Reading Practices and Sexology in Fin-de-Siècle Literature: Wilde, Stenbock, Prime-Stevenson is a welcome contribution to nineteenth-century studies. Bojti's re/discovery of the synergies between these thinkers and writers is rich and erudite; and his painstaking investigation, in particular, into the elusive Prime-Stevenson's life and works is pioneering. Bojti's archival findings are presented engagingly; and his close readings are revelatory. I've learned much from Queer Reading Practices and Sexology. This is the work of a marvellous scholar at the top of his game."
- Tom Ue, FRHistS, Assistant Professor, Cape Breton University, Canada
"This book provides scholars and students with a much-needed critical resource on queer literature and sexology at the end of the nineteenth century. It changes the way we think about queer literature's contribution to fin-de-siècle sexual science, and vice versa; better yet, its bold interdisciplinary analysis pushes us to rethink the confines of period or national literatures-encouraging us to read canonical and non-canonical texts alongside each other in order to gain a richer sense of the modern invention of homosexuality and the polymath reading practices as embraced by our queer Victorian subjects. Queer Reading Practices and Sexology in Fin-de-Siècle Literature poses a significant contribution to literary studies and queer cultural histories alike."
- S. Brooke Cameron, Associate Professor, Queen's University, Canada
"Homosexuality was a neologism coined by a Hungarian, so it is entirely fitting that, at precisely the point it was becoming the word of choice for same-sex attraction, there was a literary fashion for hungarophile/homophile literature. This book gives a lively account of three writers-Wilde, Stenbock, and Prime Stevenson-who deployed Hungarianness as a queer motif on either side of the fin de siècle."
- Douglas Pretsell, Keele University, UK
