Lovers and Beloveds: Sexual Otherness in Southern Fiction, 1936-1961A challenge to traditional criticism, this engaging study demonstrates that issues of sexuality - and same-sex desire in particular - were of central importance in the literary production of the Southern Renaissance. Especially during the 1940s and 1950s, the national literary establishment tacitly designated the South as an allowable setting for fictionalized deviancy, thus permitting southern writers tremendous freedom to explore sexual otherness. In Lovers and Beloveds, Gary Richards draws on contemporary theories of sexuality in reading the fiction of six writers of the era who accepted that potentially pejorative characterization as an opportunity: Truman Capote, William Goyen, Harper Lee, Carson McCullers, Lillian Smith, and Richard Wright. Richards skillfully juxtaposes forgotten texts by those writers with their canonical works to identify the complex narratives of same-sex desire. In their novels and stories, the authors consistently reimagine gender roles, centralize homoeroticism, and probe its relationship with class, race, biological sex, and southern identity. tradition for the region but nevertheless frustrate efforts to define southern literature along conventional lines. This is the first book to assess the significance of same-sex desire in a broad range of southern texts, making a crucial contribution to the study of both literature and sexuality. Highly readable and thoughtful in its arguments, Lovers and Beloveds reorients southern literature's outsider status as - not detrimental to its vitality but - liberating indeed. |
Contents
Truman Capote William Goyen and the Gendering | 29 |
Richard Wright and Compulsory Black Male Heterosexuality | 62 |
Lillian Smith and the Scripting of Lesbian Desire | 94 |
Harper Lee and the Destabilization of Heterosexuality | 117 |
Carson McCullers and GayLesbian Non Representation | 158 |
Other Voices Other Rooms | 199 |
BIBLIOGRAPHY | 221 |
Other editions - View all
Lovers and Beloveds: Sexual Otherness in Southern Fiction, 1936--1961 Gary Richards Limited preview - 2007 |
Lovers and Beloveds: Sexual Otherness in Southern Fiction, 1936--1961 Gary Richards Limited preview - 2007 |
Lovers and Beloveds: Sexual Otherness in Southern Fiction, 1936--1961 Gary Richards Limited preview - 2007 |
Common terms and phrases
African American Aggie Agrarians Alexandra Alma asserts Atticus Biff body Boo's Boy's Capote's Carson McCullers characters Chris Christy Christy's Clock Without Hands closet critics cultural despite Dill Dubose effeminate erotic eyes Faulkner feminine fiction Fiedler Finch Fish Fish's Fishbelly Folner Frankie Ganchion gender transitivity girl Gladney Harper Lee heterosexual homoerotic homoeroticism homophobic homosexuality homosocial identity images interactions Jester John Henry Kill a Mockingbird Laura Lee's lesbian Lillian Smith Long Dream lynching male homosexuality masculine Maycomb McCullers's midcentury Miss Maudie mother narrative nevertheless normative novel offers Penderton performances of gender perhaps persons Press queer race racial Radley Randolph readers relationship Renaissance representations reprint Richard Wright Rubin same-sex desire Sedgwick seems sexual Sherman social South southern literary production Southern Literature Strange Fruit suggests supposedly texts tion transgressive Truman Capote Tyree understanding Univ Voices white southern white women William Goyen woman writers York young