Choice 评论

Kopelson's compact book grounds eight modern gay/lesbian authors in the 19th century's inherited interdictions on same sex love. He shows that these authors devised a homoerotics out of discourses meant to erase their feelings and identities. Kopelson pays close attention to the lives and loves of the authors themselves, unusual given his deconstructive approach. Beginning with Wilde's imprisonment, Kopelson reads De Profundis against the eroticism of Dorian Gray, Teleny, and Wilde's fairy tales. The next three chapters pair male or female authors on comparable themes--Gide and Firbank (pederasty), Woolf and Stein (fictionalized biography), Yourcenar and Renault (male homosexual leaders in antiquity). The concluding chapter considers the criticism of Barthes as gay literature. Kopelson does not do justice to all the authors treated; he falls short on Orlando, for instance, dwelling at length on a single passage from a letter from Woolf to V. Sackville-West. His overall approach is often provocative, though, and he writes well on Wilde's last years. Theoretically challenging, this book is not the place to begin on these writers. Those up to it should try it. Graduate level. M. J. Emery; Cottey College