LEADER 04596nam 2200697 450 001 9910789333603321 005 20211022213456.0 010 $a0-8014-6873-6 010 $a1-322-50354-0 010 $a0-8014-6874-4 024 7 $a10.7591/9780801468742 035 $a(CKB)3400000000084958 035 $a(OCoLC)893680968 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebrary10929450 035 $a(OCoLC)966836558 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse51866 035 $a(DE-B1597)478535 035 $a(OCoLC)979910339 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780801468742 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL3138656 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10929450 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL681636 035 $a(OCoLC)922998703 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3138656 035 $a(dli)HEB01904 035 $a(MiU)MIU01000000000000011513765 035 $a(EXLCZ)993400000000084958 100 $a19931013d1994 uy| 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcnu|||||||| 181 $2rdacontent 182 $2rdamedia 183 $2rdacarrier 200 10$aHellenism and homosexuality in Victorian Oxford /$fLinda Dowling 210 1$aIthaca :$cCornell University Press,$d1994. 215 $a1 online resource (192 p.) 311 0 $a0-8014-2960-9 311 0 $a0-8014-8170-8 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references (pages 155-168) and index. 327 $tFront matter --$tContents --$tIllustrations --$tPreface --$t1. Aesthete and Effeminatus --$t2. Victorian Manhood and The Warrior Ideal --$t3. The Socratic Eros --$t4. The Higher Sodomy --$tWorks Cited --$tIndex 330 $aIn April 1895, Oscar Wilde stood in the prisoner's dock of the Old Bailey, charged with "acts of gross indecency with another male person. These filthy practices, the prosecutor declared, posed a deadly threat to English society, "a sore which cannot fail in time to corrupt and taint it all." Wilde responded with a speech of legendary eloquence, defending love between men as a love "such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare." Electrified, the spectators in the courtroom burst into applause. Although Wilde was ultimately imprisoned, the courtroom response to his speech signaled a revolutionary moment-the emergence into the public sphere of a kind of love that had always been proscribed in English culture. In this luminous work of intellectual history, Linda Dowling offers the first detailed account of Oxford Hellenism, the Victorian philosophical and literary movement that made possible Wilde's brief triumph and anticipated the modern possibility of homosexuality as a positive social identity. A homosocial culture and a language of moral legitimacy for homosexuality emerged, Dowling argues, as unforeseen consequences of Oxford University reform. Through their search in Plato and Greek literature for a transcendental value that might substitute for a lost Christian theology, such liberal reformers as Benjamin Jowett unintentionally created a cultural context in which male love-the "spiritual procreancy" celebrated in Plato's Symposium-might be both experienced and justified in ideal terms. Dowling traces the institutional career of Hellenism from its roots in Oxford reform through its blossoming in an approach to Greek studies that came to operate as a code for homosexuality. Recreating the incidents, controversies, and scandals that heralded the growth of Hellenism, Dowling provides a new cultural and theoretical context within which to read writers as diverse as Wilde, Jowett, John Addington Symonds, Walter Pater, Lord Alfred Douglas, Robert Buchanan, and W. H. Mallock. 606 $aEnglish literature$y19th century$xHistory and criticism 606 $aHomosexuality and literature$zEngland$xHistory$y19th century 606 $aGreek philology$xStudy and teaching$zEngland$zOxford$xHistory$y19th century 606 $aClassicism$zEngland$zOxford$xHistory$y19th century 606 $aGay men$zEngland$zOxford$xHistory$y19th century 607 $aOxford (England)$xSocial life and customs 615 0$aEnglish literature$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aHomosexuality and literature$xHistory 615 0$aGreek philology$xStudy and teaching$xHistory 615 0$aClassicism$xHistory 615 0$aGay men$xHistory 676 $a480/.71/141 700 $aDowling$b Linda C.$f1944-$01584020 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910789333603321 996 $aHellenism and homosexuality in Victorian Oxford$93867597 997 $aUNINA