Description
Book SynopsisSince the late 1980s, queer studies and theory have become vital to the intellectual and political life of the United States. Working from texts of European and American writers, this work analyzes a turn-of-the-century historical moment in which sexual orientation became as important a demarcation of personhood as gender had been for centuries.
Trade Review"Close readings of Melville's
Billy Budd, Wilde's
Dorian Gray, and of Proust, Nietzsche, Henry James, and Thackeray bristle with keen observations relating entrenched fears of same-sex relationships to contemporary gay-bashing." * Publishers Weekly *
"No book I have recently read is as successful as Sedgwick's in making provocative connections between literary acts and social dynamics." * The Nation *
"Pioneering and rewarding. Sedgwick has zeroed in on the taboo area of male sexuality, and the architecture she exposes is stunning." * Boston Globe *
"An important contribution to lesbian and gay studies." * San Francisco Chronicle *
"Brilliant as a work of literary criticism, a cultural study, a political analysis, and as a landmark in the development of lesbian and gay studies."
* Women's Review of Books *
“To read (and reread) Sedgwick’s
Epistemology of the Closet is a rewarding experience. This text will shatter the framework through which you think about life.” * Feminist Review *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Credits
Preface to the 2008 Edition
Introduction: Axiomatic
I. Epistemology of the Closet
2. Some Binarisms (I)
Billy Budd: After the Homosexual
3· Some Binarisms (II)
Wilde, Nietzsche, and the Sentimental Relations
of the Male Body
4· The Beast in the Closet
James and the Writing of Homosexual Panic
5· Proust and the Spectacle of the Closet
Index
