STRANGERS: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century
Graham Robb, . . Norton, $27.95 (352pp) ISBN 978-0-393-02038-0
With an impressive oeuvre comprising acclaimed biographies of Rimbaud, Balzac and Victor Hugo, Robb returns to spoof the poststructuralist convention that homosexuality, because it was not then categorized or "named," cannot be said to exist prior to 1880; he also argues that homosexual men and women in this period were not automatically persecuted. For Robb, Oscar Wilde's "martyrdom" and similar cases were exceptions to the rule of, if not acceptance, then a grudging knowing. He unpacks now obscure layers of contemporary allusion to show evidence of gay tolerance in many kinds of literary work, from high to low, from Continental, U.S. and U.K. fiction to the most obscure, nearly unreadable pamphlet. And some of the material is decidedly and hilariously antiliterary. "In
Reviewed on: 11/03/2003
Genre: Nonfiction
Hardcover - 400 pages - 978-0-330-48223-3
Paperback - 370 pages - 978-0-393-32649-9
Paperback - 370 pages - 978-0-330-48224-0