Queer Studies

doi:10.1017/9781108973946.010

Chapter 9 - Queer Studies

from Part II - Recent Critical Methods Applied to Stevens

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2021

Bart Eeckhout

Edited by

Bart Eeckhout and

Gül Bilge Han

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Bart Eeckhout: Affiliation:
Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium
Gül Bilge Han: Affiliation:
Uppsala Universitet, Sweden

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Summary

What happens when, with the knowledge and insights gained from queer studies and relevant biographical and historical scholarship, one tries to resituate Stevens not only within the aesthetic circles that may be drawn around his work but also and especially within the social circles in which he moved during his lifetime, and the poetic circles of those who have been attracted to his writings? To diversify the types of scholarship presented in The New Wallace Stevens Studies, Eeckhout’s chapter tilts more toward the biographical than other chapters do. From the new modernist studies, its investigation derives an interest in social networks at the expense of a narrow focus on self-reliant individuals; from queer studies, it borrows a fundamentally querying spirit about sexual identities and desires. Eeckhout offers a bird’s-eye survey of Stevens’s most significant queer precursors, contemporaries, and heirs, paying particular attention to the latter two groups. As case studies, he singles out Stevens’s friendships with George Santayana and José Rodríguez Feo, in which not-knowing played a central role, and the attractiveness of his licensing the fictive imagination to poets such as James Merrill and Richard Howard.

Keywords

Wallace Stevens queer studies sexuality biographical criticism influence letters George Santayana José Rodríguez Feo James Merrill Richard Howard

Type: Chapter
Information: The New Wallace Stevens Studies , pp. 123 - 135

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108973946.010 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2021

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