Has anyone given a plausible explanation of why 19th century American literature was so queer (Melville, Whitman, Dickinson, James, etc. etc.). It's very striking.
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Replying to @xlorentzen @DuncanMitchel1
Fiedler did have an explanation, a Freudian one (failure in frontier society to achieve emotional maturity so writers stuck at latency stage). I don't think it works though.
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I wrote a book sort of about this, though the critics who said that my close readings were more persuasive than my grand argument may have had a point. http://steamthing.com/american-sympathy …
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Replying to @caleb_crain @HeerJeet and
Here, roughly, are the "money quotes" from my book.pic.twitter.com/RBela9Itq2
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Replying to @caleb_crain @HeerJeet and
The ultimate answer to your question, though, would have to take into account the question of canon formation, and the role in it played by gays like Matthiessen and many others.
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And Newton Arvin. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
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But I'd be leery of an explanation along the lines of "gay critics chose gay writers when they made the canon." Literary scholarship may always have been disproportionately gay, but it almost certainly has never been in the dominion of gays. The arguments had to persuade.
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Yeah, I suspect it was a multiplicity of factors, partly some gay critics looking for a usuable past but also that the past they found (democratic, fraternal, outdoorsy) conformed to a certain very popular version of American nationalism.
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