Foundlings : lesbian and gay historical emotion before Stonewall / Christopher Nealon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nealon, Christopher S. (Christopher Shaun), 1967-

Series:

Series Q

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gay people--United States.

Gay people.

United States.

Gay people--United States--Identity.

Identity (Philosophical concept).

Homosexuality--United States.

Homosexuality.

Physical Description:

xi, 209 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2001.

Summary:

What is it like to "feel historical"? In Foundings Christopher Nealon analyzes texts produced by American gay men and lesbians in the first half of the twentieth century -- poems by Hart Crane, novels by Willa Cather, gay male physique magazines, and lesbian pulp fiction. Nealon brings these diverse works together by highlighting a coming-of-age narrative he calls "founding" -- a term for queer disaffiliation from and desire for family, nation, and history.

The young runaways in Cather's novels, the way critics conflated Crane's homosexual body with his verse, the suggestive poses and utopian captions of muscle magazines, and Beebo Brinker, the aging butch heroine from Ann Bannon's pulp novels -- all embody for Nealon the uncertain space between two models of lesbian and gay sexuality. The "inversion" model dominant in the first half of the century held that homosexuals are souls of one gender trapped in the body of another, while the more contemporary "ethnic" model refers to the existence of a distinct and collective culture among gay men and lesbians. Nealon's unique readings, however, reveal a constant movement between these two discursive poles, and not, as is widely theorized, a linear progress from one to the other.

Contents:

The Invert, the Foundling, and the "Member of the Tribe" 1

Chapter 1 Hart Crane's History 25

Chapter 2 Feeling and Affiliation in Willa Cather 61

Chapter 3 The Secret Public of Physique Culture 99

Chapter 4 The Ambivalence of Lesbian Pulp Fiction 141

Conclusion: Contexts and Afterlives 177.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [197]-205) and index.

ISBN:

0822326884

0822326973

OCLC:

46634092