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Men Desiring Men by Susan E. Gustafson
The Poetry of Same-sex Identity and Desire in German Classicism
Many cultural historians agreed with Foucault that the late 19th century witnesses the birth of the homosexual identity. This work argues that the literature and discourse of male-male desire was evident a century earlier, within the tradition of German Classicism.This groundbreaking analysis illustrates for the first time how men who desired other men in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries consciously developed their own poetic language of same-sex-desire, identity, self, and community. At what point in history did a "homosexual identity" begin to emerge? Many cultural historians have agreed with Foucault that the late nineteenth century witnessed its birth -- they argue that earlier eras were dominated by discourses of sodomy, they understood sodomy as a category of forbidden acts, and they were not engaged in producing same-sex identity formations. In this bold rethinking of the question, Susan E. Gustafson goes beyond the medical, psychoanalytical, and legal discourses that Foucault viewed as the initiators of modern sexual identities to explore the literature and discourse of male-male desire a century earlier, within the tradition of German Classicism. Reading such authors as Goethe, Winckelman, and Moritz, she finds a self-conscious formulation of same-sex desire, leading to a sense of identity and community. The book focuses on how men who desired one another in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries expressed their longings and identities in new poetic formulations. Gustafson shows that major figures of German Classicism struggled consciously and systematically in their letters, aesthetic writings, and literary production to create a new language to express their own senses of same-sex desire. She maps out specifically how these men defined themselves and how they lent themselves a particular morphology, that is, how they saw themselves with a specific kind of childhood, history, character, and desire. Men DesiringMen offers an unprecedented look at the reconceptualizations of the self during the Classical period as they relate to new expressions of the beginnings of same-sex identity formations. |
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| Author(s) : Susan E. Gustafson | Format : Hardback Book |
| ISBN-10 : 0814330290 | ISBN-13 : 9780814330296 |
| RRP : £25.50 | Best available price : £ / $ |
| Prices as of : BST check live prices | |
Product Details:
Series Title : Kritik: German Literary Theory & Cultural Studies
Country Publication : United States
Publication Date : 30/06/2002
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
Page Length : 240mm
Page Size : 229mm