1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910136124003321

Autore

Janes Dominic

Titolo

Oscar Wilde Prefigured : Queer Fashioning and British Caricature, 1750-1900 / / Dominic Janes

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago : , : University of Chicago Press, , [2016]

©2016

ISBN

0-226-39655-X

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (294 pages) : illustrations

Collana

Chicago scholarship online

Classificazione

HL 4865

Disciplina

741.56941

Soggetti

Caricature - Social aspects - Great Britain

Gay men - Great Britain - Caricatures and cartoons

Dandies - Great Britain - Caricatures and cartoons

Gay men in art

Homosexuality and art - Great Britain

Homosexuality - Great Britain - History - 19th century

Homosexuality - Great Britain - History - 18th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Previously issued in print: 2016.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Macaronis -- 3. Men of Feeling -- 4. The Later Eighteenth Century: Conclusions -- 5. Regency Dandies -- 6. Byronists -- 7. The Earlier Nineteenth Century: Conclusions -- 8. Aesthetes -- 9. New Men -- 10. The Later Nineteenth Century: Conclusions -- References -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

"I do not say you are it, but you look it, and you pose at it, which is just as bad," Lord Queensbury challenged Oscar Wilde in the courtroom-which erupted in laughter-accusing Wilde of posing as a sodomite. What was so terrible about posing as a sodomite, and why was Queensbury's horror greeted with such amusement? In Oscar Wilde Prefigured, Dominic Janes suggests that what divided the two sides in this case was not so much the question of whether Wilde was or was not a sodomite, but whether or not it mattered that people could appear to be sodomites. For many, intimations of sodomy were simply a part of the amusing spectacle of sophisticated life. Oscar Wilde



Prefigured is a study of the prehistory of this "queer moment" in 1895. Janes explores the complex ways in which men who desired sex with men in Britain had expressed such interests through clothing, style, and deportment since the mid-eighteenth century. He supplements the well-established narrative of the inscription of sodomitical acts into a homosexual label and identity at the end of the nineteenth century by teasing out the means by which same-sex desires could be signaled through visual display in Georgian and Victorian Britain. Wilde, it turns out, is not the starting point for public queer figuration. He is the pivot by which Georgian figures and twentieth-century camp stereotypes meet. Drawing on the mutually reinforcing phenomena of dandyism and caricature of alleged effeminates, Janes examines a wide range of images drawn from theater, fashion, and the popular press to reveal new dimensions of identity politics, gender performance, and queer culture.