Dialogue and Deviance: Male-Male Desire in the Dialogue Genre (Plato to Aelred, Plato to Sade, Plato to the Postmodern) PDF
Preview Dialogue and Deviance: Male-Male Desire in the Dialogue Genre (Plato to Aelred, Plato to Sade, Plato to the Postmodern)
Dialogue and Deviance This page intentionally left blank Dialogue and Deviance Male–Male Desire in the Dialogue Genre (Plato to Aelred, Plato to Sade, Plato to the Postmodern) Robert S. Sturges DIALOGUEANDDEVIANCE © Robert S.Sturges,2005. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-0-312-23069-2 All rights reserved.No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue,New York,N.Y.10010 and Houndmills,Basingstoke,Hampshire,England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St.Martin’s Press,LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries.Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sturges,Robert Stuart,1953– Dialogue and deviance :male-male desire in the dialogue genre (Plato to Aelred,Plato to Sade,Plato to the postmodern) / Robert S.Sturges. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references (p.). ISBN 978-1-349-38599-7 ISBN 978-1-4039-7851-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781403978516 1.Homosexuality in literature.2.Dialogue.I.Title. PN56.H57S78 2005 2004053387 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd.,Chennai,India. First edition:February 2005 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For my sister, Linda Ard, and in memory of our mother, Barbara Sturges This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ix Introduction 1 1. Erotics of Friendship:From Plato’s Lysis to Aelred of Rievaulx 13 2. Spiritual Erotics: From Plato’s Symposiumto Sade’s La Philosophie dans le boudoir 73 3. Erotic Style: From Plato’s Phaedrusto the Modern Novel 155 Conclusion: Deviant Erotics from Plato to the Postmodern 221 Notes 235 Index 281 This page intentionally left blank Preface Let me begin by frankly acknowledging that I have come to this project as an amateur, in all senses of the word. “Amateur,” for one thing, suggests a lack of professional expertise. Many of the texts I consider in this book might properly be classified as “philosophical dialogues,” and, as an English professor with a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, I indeed lack formal training in philosophy. Furthermore, my academic specialization in medieval English and French literature has been only tangentially relevant to most of the texts considered here, linking as they do ancient Greece and Rome with early modern Italy, Enlightenment France, twentieth-century America, and several modern European cultures, as well as with the high Middle Ages. Important as professional specializa- tion undoubtedly is in the modern academy, however, I would also argue that the academy should always make room for educated amateurs, for those willing to step outside their “areas” and try to see a bigger picture. And “amateur” also means “lover”; it is as a lover that I come to these texts. I read Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus seriously for the first time when I encountered them on the Brown University Comparative Literature department’s list of “set books” for graduate students, and it was love at firstsight. Fusty and old-fashioned as it must seem to a younger generation of queer scholars, Plato helped me, like Oscar Wilde, André Gide, E. M. Forster’s Maurice, and Mary Renault’s Laurie, come to terms with my own sexuality. And it is as a modern gay man—all terms I use deliberately— seeking to unite my private and professional lives, my love and my work, that I first envisioned this project. My hope is that the positive qualities of the amateur may outweigh the deficiencies, and I have included through- out the following chapters references to recent professionals in these differ- ent fields for the benefit of those who wish to follow up some aspect of my argument—or argue against it—in greater detail. A note on languages: I am a native speaker of English, and have studied several of the other languages in which these texts were originally written in a formal classroom setting: French and German as an undergraduate, Latin in graduate school. In others, Greek and Italian, I am self-taught.
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