A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition [Hardcover]

Dr. Gregory Woods (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 1998

While many books have been written about gay writing, this is an account of male gay literature, across cultures, languages, and from ancient times to the present. Working within the widest definitions of what constitutes gay literature, it includes chapters on the significant periods of cultural history (the Greek and Roman civilizations, the Middle Ages, the European Renaissance, the American Renaissance and the 20th century), on major writers (Marlowe, Shakespeare, Proust, Wilde) and on common themes (boyhood, mourning, masturbation). A work of reference as well as a history of a tradition, it covers a large field in terms of time (from Homer to Edmund White), literary status (from cultural icons like Virgil and Dante to popular novelists like Clive Barker and Dashiell Hammett), and location (from Mishima's Tokyo and Abu Nuwas' Baghdada to David Leavitt's New York). The book also deals with representations of male-male love by writers who were not themselves homosexual or bisexual men. It also addresses gaps, such as the lack of a substantial literature of the gay holocaust and the dearth of gay writing in post-colonial African poetry. In the breadth of its scope, the book confronts trends in Anglo-American gay studies, both by insisting on the internationalism of homosexual culture and by reasserting a continuity of homo-erotic traditions between the ancient world and the present. Furthermore, by declining to focus only on the most obvious authors and texts, Woods succeeds in both widening the gay canon and reminding us of the large variety of gay works within the mainstream. What emerges is a gay male literature that is far from peripheral to the world's major cultural traditions. This work celebrates the complexity of the literature that gay men write, read, and offer to the broadest market.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The very idea of a unique tradition of gay-male writing began relatively recently. Early in the 20th century, homosexual writers began to write more honestly. Yet writers, both gay and straight, have written about the experience of homosexuality since ancient times. In his encyclopedic overview, Gregory Woods has knitted together a transhistorical and transcultural history--a tradition--of gay-male writing over the centuries. Using a broad but readily applicable definition of gay literature that includes works by openly gay men, works in which homosexual activity occurs, and works that manifest a gay "sensibility," Woods manages to move us from Homer to David Leavitt, from Arabic poets of the classical age to contemporary South African poetry, from closeted Victorian memoirs to AIDS literature. By its nature, A History of Gay Literature lacks the specificity of critique that illuminates individual work, but this approach is more than compensated for by the book's ability to locate and discuss amazing similarities of experience and expression throughout history and culture. Highly intelligent, jauntily written, and endlessly informative, A History of Gay Literature is an impressive addition to contemporary gay scholarship.

From Publishers Weekly

Woods's (Articulate Flesh: Male Homo-Eroticism and Modern Poetry) dense but rewarding history has a lofty aim: "queering the canon." Starting with the man-boy love of Greek classics, this academic text focuses on homoeroticism in the literary imagination. But Woods does more. By analyzing attitudes about homosexual men, he looks at the homophobic ideologies that poetry and prose have encouraged throughout history. While there is not enough information on the role of religion in classifying sodomy as sin, Woods demonstrates that as early as the 12th century, hostility against man-to-man love was evident. But despite the linking of homosexual love with shame and repentance, it formed a culture?described by writers as diverse as Aristophanes, Rumi, William Shakespeare, the Marquis de Sade, Walt Whitman, Federico Garcia Lorca, Langston Hughes and Jane Austen?that held on. Woods's commentary about the Nazis and about the popular postwar belief that fascism developed because of Germany's tolerance of "sexual perversion" is eye-opening, as is his deconstruction of 1950s crime fiction, which routinely depicted gay men as deviants. Woods moves his readers into the decades since Stonewall and scrutinizes writing that deals with gay pride as well as AIDS. Throughout, his point that homoerotic traditions are a literary constant is well-taken and persuasively argued. Woods makes inroads in defining queer culture and illuminates the essential role gay men have played in the Western canon.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; First Edition edition (February 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300072015
• ISBN-13: 978-0300072013
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,000,951 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An important, major survey that reads like a great history !, April 22, 2000

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition (Hardcover)

Poet and author Gregory Lewis has given us one of the more readable compendiums tracing the birth and maturation of gay themes and styles in literature. Many authors have approached this task as a sensational "outing" of famous writers whose true sexual preferences will always be shrouded by the curtain of history. Lewis has chosen to deal with actual portions of writings in a scholastic method that creates a credible case for his choices of inclusion in the lineage of gay writers. Infused with brief descriptions of the social history of the times he is describing (Greek, Roman, Middle Ages, Shakespeare/Marlowe, Melville, Whitman, Wilde, Forster, Genet, Gide, Holleran, Leavitt, Monette, Auden, Rechy, etc), he lays the timely mores for interpreting the written word and in doing so does not preach to his readers. And though this book is heavily footnoted, researched, and extensive in its coverage of known and less known writers, it is eminently readable! Lewis is not afraid to let us know when his "opinion" versus "cold fact" is being stated; he allows us to grow to understand his method of decision making and is generous in his quotations of passages that support his claims. For the reader who wants a gossipy book of "Secrets of the Closeted Writers" this is not the resource. For those who want to examine the works of Thomas Mann, Shakespeare, E.M. Forster, Henry James, Plato, Socrates (the list is endless) in an erudite manner, welcome to the feast. Lewis is a gifted historian, social commentator, and gentle philosopher. And this book is one to read over an unhurried, extended period of time. There are riches here to savour as you read and for later as a reference volume of considerable significance.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive Survey, February 12, 2001

By 

Ricky Hunter (New York City, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition (Paperback)

Gregory Woods, in A History of Gay Literature, The Male Tradition, has written a comprehensive examination of gay male literature through the centuries and around the globe. It looks at text and subtext and context to find the gay meaning or the meaning for gays in the annals of historical literature. Along the way the reader will learn new aspects of literature (such as the chapter on African poetry, to name one example from my own ignorance) and new ways to look at familiar books and poems. For all its breadth, it is wonderfully readable and somewhat addictive. It had me searching out various books to read them for myself. The writing is so good that I was equally fascinated reading about the books I had not read or did not even know about as I was reading about the others. This is a very good survey and a fun read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Guidebook to a New Field, January 12, 2008

By 

Ford Ka (Edinburgh, Scotland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition (Paperback)

If your interest in gay literature is just starting (and there is no need anymore to explain why) this book will give you a head start. You can find here information on a vast variety of books which you may pick up to expand your knowledge, curiosity, or simply spend you time reading for pleasure. Woods draws an interesting panorama of homesexual themes in literature from the Antiquity to the Present.
However, if you are quite far in the subject, you may find this volume a little bit too simplistic and disagree with some of Woods conclusions - e.g. the use of the word "gay" in the title may be quite disputable in the context. But still you may find many pieces of information you haven't yet heard.