literature >> Overview: American Literature: Gay Male, 1900-1969
Although largely invisible to the general public, a large body of twentieth-century gay male literature by American authors was published prior to Stonewall, some of it positive but most of it tinged with misery or bleakness as the price of being published and disseminated.
literature >> Overview: American Literature: Nineteenth Century
Although sometimes coded as romantic friendship, both gay male and lesbian attractions are reflected in nineteenth-century American poetry and fiction, including works by such major figures as Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson.
literature >> Overview: Bloomsbury
The Bloomsbury circle's open acceptance of erotic license and hostility toward social convention are important elements in the history of homosexuality among the English upper classes in the first half of the twentieth century.
literature >> Overview: Decadence
Nineteenth-century Decadent literature either describes aspects of decadent life and society or reflects the decadent literary aesthetic.
literature >> Overview: English Literature: Nineteenth Century
From its beginning, the nineteenth century in England had a purposeful homosexual literature of considerable bulk, both male and female, though it was fettered by oppression.
literature >> Overview: English Literature: Twentieth-Century
Homosexuality, both male and female, has a rich, divergent, and increasingly open expression in the literature of the twentieth century.
literature >> Overview: French Literature: Nineteenth Century
In the nineteenth century gay and lesbian sexuality becomes a significant subject in French literature.
literature >> Overview: French Literature: Twentieth Century
The contributions of gay men and lesbians to twentieth-century French literature have been closely intertwined with the course of mainstream literature.
social sciences >> Overview: United Kingdom I: The Middle Ages through the Nineteenth Century
The United Kingdom has a rich and vibrant legacy of queer cultural expression despite a long history of severe legal sanctions against male-male sexual acts and other manifestations of sexual and gender deviance.
literature >> Baudelaire, Charles
Baudelaire was among the first French poets to include lesbians as subjects.
literature >> Cather, Willa
One of America's premier literary artists in the earlier twentieth century, Willa Cather reflected her own lesbianism in the creation of strong women characters and in the exploration of male homosexuality.
literature >> Cocteau, Jean
An outspoken homosexual, Jean Cocteau was a prolific poet, novelist, critic, essayist, artist, and filmmaker.
literature >> Eliot, T[homas] S[tearns]
Although Eliot tried to suppress the fact, The Waste Land is an elegy for a young Frenchman whom he met and loved in Paris and who died in the Great War in 1915.
literature >> Forster, E. M.
One of the finest English novelists of the twentieth century and a tireless defender of humane values, Forster deserves a special place in the gay and lesbian literary heritage.
literature >> Huysmans, Joris-Karl
J. K. Huysmans, an important figure in the Aesthetic and Decadent movements, exemplified a style of homosexuality at a pivotal moment in the emergence of a gay identity.
literature >> James, Henry
Though closeted, Henry James had a number of intimate relations with young men, and his sexual orientation imbued his fiction.
literature >> Montesquiou-Fezensac, Count Robert de
Count Robert de Montesquiou was a writer during France's Belle Epoque, but he is best remembered as a dandy and an aesthete, who inspired the literary creations of others.
literature >> Pater, Walter
The aesthetic of the important and influential Victorian critic Walter Pater reflected a homosexual sensibility.
literature >> Proust, Marcel
Marcel Proust is the author of A la recherche du temps perdu, one of the major achievements of Modernism and a great gay novel.
literature >> Rimbaud, Arthur
Because his writing stresses liberation, the French "boy-poet" Arthur Rimbaud, whose art is based solely on his individual creativity, is a progenitor of modern gay poetics.
social sciences >> Santos-Dumont, Alberto
The achievement of Alberto Santos-Dumont, the Brazilian dandy who is regarded by many as the father of modern aviation, may have been minimized in some circles because he was likely homosexual.
literature >> Sappho
Admired through the ages as one of the greatest lyric poets, the ancient Greek writer Sappho is today esteemed by lesbians around the world as the archetypal lesbian and their symbolic mother.
literature >> Swinburne, Algernon Charles
Algernon Charles Swinburne was interested in flagellation, sadomasochism, bisexuality, and lesbianism, not only for their erotics but also as gestures of social and cultural rebellion.
literature >> Symonds, John Addington
John Addington Symonds was the most daring innovator in the history of nineteenth-century British homosexual writing and consciousness.
literature >> Verlaine, Paul
The poetry of Paul Verlaine celebrates both heterosexual and homosexual activity, including lesbian relationships.
literature >> Wilde, Oscar
Oscar Wilde is important both as an accomplished writer and as a symbolic figure who exemplified a way of being homosexual at a pivotal moment in the emergence of gay consciousness.
