Catholic Figures, Queer Narratives

Catholic Figures, Queer Narratives examines the relationship between Catholicism and homosexuality in a wide range of literary spaces. Why did so many homosexual Modernists embrace Catholicism? What is the role of Gothic anti-Catholicism in shaping modern definitions of both homosexual and Catholic identity? This timely new book interrogates the relationship between historical homophobia and the contemporary "crossroads" of the Church and homosexual. Authors discussed include Radclyffe Hall, James Joyce, Willa Cather, Djuna Barnes, and Evelyn Waugh, as well as many lesser-known figures. Not all were Catholic, nor were all homosexual - but all contributed to the queering discourses of devotion and desire. Moving from the Gothic to the late 20th century, from Britain to America and France, Catholic Figures, Queer Narratives provides encounters in what's queer about Catholicism and what's modern about homosexuality. The result is a radical re-vision of the sacred - in life and art, the body and faith.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: The Catholic Modernist Crisis, Queer Modern Catholicisms; F.S.Roden Queer Converts: Peculiar Pleasures and Subtle Antinomianism; T.L. Long The Horrors of Catholicism: Religion and Sexuality in Gothic Fiction; G.E.Haggerty Michael Field, John Gray, and Marc-Andre Raffalovich: Re-Inventing Romantic Friendship in Modernity; F.S.Roden Confessing Stephen: The Nostalgic Erotics of Catholicism in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; P.R.O'Malley 'Uncovenanted Joys': Catholicism, Sapphism, and Cambridge Ritualist Theory in Hope Mirrlees's Madelaine: One of Loves Jansenists; R.Vanita The Feminist Priest and the Female Outsider: Catholicism and Sexuality in Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop; S.Hill The Well of Loneliness and the Catholic Rhetoric of Sexual Dissidence; R.Dellamora 'The Women that God Forgot': Queerness, Camp, Lies and Catholicism in Djuna Barnes's Nightwood; P.J.Smith 'A Twitch Upon the Thread': Revisiting Brideshead Revisited'; F.Coppa The Altar of the Soul: Sexuality and Spirituality in the Works of Julien Green; T.J.D.Armbrecht Notes Index

About the Author

LOWELL GALLAGHER is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. He is the author of Medusa's Gaze: Casuistry and Conscience in the Renaissance as well as numerous articles on early modern English Catholicism, Shakespeare and postmodern ethics. FREDERICK S. RODEN is Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, USA. He is the author of Same-Sex Desire in Victorian Religious Culture and the editor of Palgrave Advances in Oscar Wilde Studies. PATRICIA JULIANA SMITH is Assistant Professor of English at Hofstra University, USA. She is author of Lesbian Panic: Homoeroticism in Modern British Women's Fictions and has edited En Travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera; The Queer Sixties and The Book of Gay and Lesbian Quotations.

Prizes

THOMAS J.D. ARMBRECHT Assistant Professor of French, University of Wisconsin, USA FRANCESCA COPPA Associate Professor of English, Muhlenberg College, USA RICHARD DELLAMORA Teaches in the Department of English and Cultural Studies and the Centre for Theory, Culture and Politics, Trent University, Ontario, Canada GEORGE E. HAGGERTY Professor of English, University of California, USA SUSAN HILL Associate Professor of Religion, University of Northern Iowa, USA THOMAS LAWRENCE LONG Professor of English and Chancellor's Commonwealth Professor, Thomas Nelson Community College in Hampton, Virginia, USA PATRICK R. O'MALLEY Assistant Professor of English, Georgetown University, USA RUTH VANITA Professor, University of Montana, USA