Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature
- The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Reading Ancient and Classical Cultures
- Part II Renaissance and Early Modern
- Part III Enlightenment Cultures
- Part IV Queer Modernisms
- 18 Turn-of-the-Century Decadence and Aestheticism
- 19 Black Socks, Green Threads: On Proust and the Hermeneutics of Inversion
- 20 “This Sudden Silence”: A Brief History of the Literature of Caribbean Women Who Love Women
- 21 Modernist Poetry
- 22 Queer, Cosmopolitan
- Part V Geographies of Same-Sex Desire in the Modern World
- Part VI Genres of the Present
- Index
19 - Black Socks, Green Threads: On Proust and the Hermeneutics of Inversion
from Part IV - Queer Modernisms
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2014
By
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature
- The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Reading Ancient and Classical Cultures
- Part II Renaissance and Early Modern
- Part III Enlightenment Cultures
- Part IV Queer Modernisms
- 18 Turn-of-the-Century Decadence and Aestheticism
- 19 Black Socks, Green Threads: On Proust and the Hermeneutics of Inversion
- 20 “This Sudden Silence”: A Brief History of the Literature of Caribbean Women Who Love Women
- 21 Modernist Poetry
- 22 Queer, Cosmopolitan
- Part V Geographies of Same-Sex Desire in the Modern World
- Part VI Genres of the Present
- Index
Summary
Marcel Proust's book is inhabited by many books, but the most important one is a vast essay on Eros. His materials are relationships between men and women, as in Swann in Love. In using the term sexual inversion, Proust alluded to a notion that was common enough at the time, namely that homosexual males were "inverted men". Homosexuality was felt by many to be a violation of the law of God and the law of Nature, even an affront to the mental health of the nation. In the circles in which Proust moved, especially as a young man, many people understood perfectly well that he had close relationships with men. But he wanted at all costs to avoid being labeled a "homosexual". A striking feature of Proust's novel is perhaps not that it pays a great deal of attention to male homosexuality but rather its passionate interest in lesbianism.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature , pp. 344 - 362Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014