AJ26064 Gay Studies: Britain and the Continent

Faculty of Arts
Autumn 2007
Extent and Intensity
0/2/0. 2 credit(s) (plus 3 credits for an exam). Recommended Type of Completion: zk (examination). Other types of completion: z (credit).
Teacher(s)
doc. Michael Matthew Kaylor, PhD. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A.
Department of English and American Studies – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: Tomáš Hanzálek
Timetable
Mon 16:40–18:15 G31
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is only offered to the students of the study fields the course is directly associated with.

The capacity limit for the course is 15 student(s).
Current registration and enrolment status: enrolled: 0/15, only registered: 0/15
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
Since the ascension of Christian, Western culture has often - except to a limited degree during halcyon moments such as the Renaissance - considered same-sex desire (whether actualised, textualised, or merely conceptualised) as an inherent threat, positing a form of love, intimacy, and/or erotic expression that society's 'legitimate' powers - social, medical, ethical, religious, legal, political, scholarly, and familial - have often deemed maladjusted, psychotic, immoral, sinful, unlawful, fringe, objectionable, and/or intrusive. This course will examine the ways in which same-sex desire has been exploited and explored as a critique, variant, alternative, or challenge to more accepted modes of love or physical intimacy, and it will do so by concentrating on literary and pictorial representations, tracing the same-sex continuum from the Greco-Roman period to today, particularly in regard to a British cultural and societal context. Due to the highly erotic nature of most of what will be covered, students who anticipate feeling uncomfortable with such materials or a frank, academic discussion of them should reconsider their enrolment in this course. This course will not emphasise the fashionable theories that have dominated much of the critical discussion on this topic (namely those of Michel Foucault and David Halperin) - hence, the choice of the more old-fashioned title of 'Gay Studies' rather than 'Queer Theory'. In essence, this course will concentrate on 'continuities' rather than 'ruptures', disagreeing with the claim that same-sex 'identities' only became tangible after Karl-Maria Kertbeny (1824-82), an Austrian-born journalist and human rights advocate, coined the neologism 'homosexual' in 1869. Instead, this course will assume that 'It would be absurd to suggest that homosexuality was a novel invention, like the telephone or electricity, on which the forward-looking Victorian had stumbled and had placed into society as an innovationary development in the arena of human experience. Rather, it was a road along which humans had always travelled, sadly, for it was often snared with pitfalls or barricaded by religious and secular authorities alike who believed it to lead to the gates of hell, and those who ventured along it did so silently and secretly' (Timothy d'Arch Smith, Love in Earnest, p.1)
Syllabus
  • Week 1: Introduction Week 2: The Greco-Roman Period Topics covered: John Addington Symonds; Benjamin Jowett; the Greek paederastic tradition; Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus; Sappho. Required reading: J. A. Symonds's apologia A Problem in Greek Ethics. Supplemental film: Alexander (directed by Oliver Stone). Week 3: The Greco-Roman Period Topics covered: E. M. Forster; Edward Perry Warren and his cup; Martial's epigrams. Required reading: E. M. Forster's short stories 'The Classical Annex' and 'The Torque'. Supplemental film: Maurice (directed by James Ivory; with deleted scenes). Week 4: The Renaissance Topics covered: Christopher Marlowe; the pastoral tradition; Edward II and Piers Gaveston; Derek Jarman's film adaptation; court favourites. Required reading: Christopher Marlowe's play Edward II. Supplemental film: Edward II (directed by Derek Jarman). Week 5: The Renaissance Topics covered: Oscar Wilde; William Shakespeare and his sonnets; James I; Ganymede in art. Required reading: Oscar Wilde's story 'Portrait of Mr. W. H.'; several of Michelangelo's sonnets. Supplemental film: Orlando (directed by Sally Potter). Week 6: The Augustan Period Topics covered: Walter Pater; Johann Joachim Winckelmann; Molly Houses; the Vere Street Coterie; William Beckford; the Marquis De Sade. Required reading: Walter Pater's essay 'Winckelmann'. Supplemental film: Kinsey (directed by Bill Condon). Week 7: The Romantic Period Topics covered: George Gordon, Lord Byron; John Polidori; Percy Bysshe Shelley's translation of Plato's Symposium and 'Manners of the Ancient Greeks'; Gothicism; Jeremy Bentham. Required reading: Shelley's essay 'On Love'; [often attributed to Lord Byron], 'Don Leon'. Supplemental film: Interview with a Vampire (directed by Neil Jordan). Week 8: The Victorian Period Topics covered: The Uranians; William Johnson (later Cory); Digby Dolben; Gerard Manley Hopkins; Walter Pater; Simeon Solomon; Oscar Browning; Frederic Leighton; Arthur Rimbaud; Paul Verlaine. Required reading: Gerard Manley Hopkins's poems 'The Bugler's First Communion' and 'Epithalamion'. Supplemental film: Total Eclipse (directed by Agnieszka Holland). Week 9: The Victorian Period Topics covered: the Labouchère Amendment and 'gross indecency'; the Cleveland Street scandal; Jack the Ripper; Oscar Wilde's trials; medical construction of 'homosexuality'; Wilhelm von Gloeden; Havelock Ellis; Edward Carpenter; Sir Richard Francis Burton. Required reading: Henry James's short story 'The Pupil'; John Francis Bloxam's short story 'The Priest and the Acolyte'. Supplemental film: Wilde (directed by Brian Gilbert). Week 10: 1900-1967 Topics covered: E. M. Forster; Virginia Woolf; Forrest Reid; Frederick Rolfe (Baron Corvo); the BSSSP; Lawrence of Arabia; the Great War poets. Required reading: Forrest Reid's novella The Garden God and short story 'Pan's Pupil'; E. M. Forster's short story 'The Story of a Panic'. Supplemental film: The Hours (directed by Stephen Daldry). Week 11: 1967 - Present Topics covered: Mary Renault; the impact of 1950s and 1960s legislation of same-sex eroticism and expression. Required reading: Mary Renault's novel The Last of the Wine. Supplemental film: The Dreamers (directed by Bernardo Bertolucci). * Five-page essay is due * Week 12: 1967 - Present Topics covered: Alan Hollinghurst; the Pet Shop Boys and homoerotic music videos; same-sex legislation in contemporary Britain. Required reading: Alan Hollinghurst's novel The Swimming-Pool Library. Supplemental film: The Pillow Book (directed by Peter Greenaway). Week 13: Conclusion
Language of instruction
English
Further comments (probably available only in Czech)
The course is taught only once.
Information on course enrolment limitations: Předmět si nemohou zapsat studenti Bc. studia AJ
The course is also listed under the following terms Autumn 2006.
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