ldquo;I do not say you are it; but you look it; and you pose at it; which is just as bad;rdquo; Lord Queensbury challenged Oscar Wilde in the courtroommdash;which erupted in laughtermdash;accusing Wilde of posing as a sodomite. What was so terrible about posing as a sodomite; and why was Queensburyrsquo;s horror greeted with such amusement? In Oscar Wilde Prefigured; Dominic Janes suggests that what divided the two sides in this case was not so much the question of whether Wilde was or was not a sodomite; but whether or not it mattered that people could appear to be sodomites. For many; intimations of sodomy were simply a part of the amusing spectacle of sophisticated life.Oscar Wilde Prefigured is a study of the prehistory of this ldquo;queer momentrdquo; in 1895. Janes explores the complex ways in which men who desired sex with men in Britain had expressed such interests through clothing; style; and deportment since the mid-eighteenth century. He supplements the well-established narrative of the inscription of sodomitical acts into a homosexual label and identity at the end of the nineteenth century by teasing out the means by which same-sex desires could be signaled through visual display in Georgian and Victorian Britain. Wilde; it turns out; is not the starting point for public queer figuration. He is the pivot by which Georgian figures and twentieth-century camp stereotypes meet. Drawing on the mutually reinforcing phenomena of dandyism and caricature of alleged effeminates; Janes examines a wide range of images drawn from theater; fashion; and the popular press to reveal new dimensions of identity politics; gender performance; and queer culture.
2014-01-14 2014-01-14File Name: B01MD1OXHE
Review
