Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-jr42d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T06:11:30.801Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

15 - The Gothic Novel and the Negotiation of Homophobia

from Part III - Enlightenment Cultures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2014

E. L. McCallum
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
Mikko Tuhkanen
Affiliation:
Texas A & M University
Get access

Summary

The Gothic novel, at least prior to the Stonewall Resistance Riot of 1969, is profoundly reticent about the spectacle of direct homophobia, as reticent as it is about the spectacle of homosexuality. To approach the dialogue between the structuring principle of homophobia in the early Gothic novel and the novel's remarkable silence on the topic of male-male sexual relations, one must return to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's formative work in Between Men. This chapter describes two Gothic narratives from the long nineteenth-century Anglo-Irish tradition: Lewis's 1796 novel The Monk, and Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 novella "Carmilla". If The Monk offers its readers a series of anachronistically understood metonyms that can be pressed to cohere in the legible figure of "the homosexual" Le Fanu's "Carmilla" offers a narrative of a young woman named Laura, who lives with her father in a remote castle in the Austrian province of Styria.
Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×