Closet Writing/Gay Reading: The Case of Melville's Pierre

Title: Closet Writing/Gay Reading: The Case of Melville's Pierre
Author: James Creech
ISBN: 9780226120225
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1994
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Condition: Used: Near Fine
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Literary Criticism 1683027

Publisher Description:
One of the most urgent tasks for gay studies today, James Creech argues, is the retrieval of a repressed, "closeted" literary heritage. But contradictions and problems cloud even the most basic theoretical questions: What does a lesbian or gay reading of a literary text require or presume? Can we talk about a homosexual writer expressing him- or herself before the invention of "homosexuality"? Was it possible for a writer like Herman Melville, for example, to create literary works linked to his own prohibited eros?

In "Closet Writing/Gay Reading, " Creech shows how a literary critic can be receptive to implicit and closeted sexual content. Forcefully advocating a tactic of identification and projection in literary analysis, he lends renewed currency to the kind of "sentimental" response to literature that continental theory--particularly deconstruction--has sought to discredit.

In the second half of his book, Creech sets out to analyze what he considers the exemplary novel of the nineteenth-century closet, Melville's "Pierre, or: The Ambiguities." By approaching "Pierre" as the gay man Melville longed to have as its reader, Creech is able to decipher the novel's "encrypted erotics" and to reveal that Melville's apparent tale of incest is actually a homosexual novel in disguise. The closeted "address" to queer-sensitive readers that "Pierre" disseminates finally receives a critical reading that strives to be explicit, shareable, and public.

"An extremely welcome addition to the short shelf of indispensable books in gay studies and theory."--Michael Moon, author of "Disseminating Whitman" James Creech is professor of French and Italian at Miami University.