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‘Now—For a Breath I Tarry’: Breath, Desire and Queer Materialism at the Fin de Siècle

Riddell, Fraser

‘Now—For a Breath I Tarry’: Breath, Desire and Queer Materialism at the Fin de Siècle Thumbnail


Authors



Contributors

Corinne Saunders
Editor

David Fuller
Editor

Jane Macnaughton
Editor

Abstract

Riddell explores how tropes of breath and breathlessness articulate the relationship between materiality, desire, and loss for queer subjects in Victorian literature. The essay presents readings of A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, John Addington Symonds’s Memoirs, and Walter Pater’s ‘Sebastian van Storck’ (from Imaginary Portraits). It also examines nineteenth-century sexology (including writings by Magnus Hirschfeld) to demonstrate how certain modes of breathing were directly associated with non-normative sexuality in the period. Riddell draws upon insights from contemporary queer theory, in its turns toward negative affect and phenomenology, to examine precarious forms of embodied subjectivity in the history of homosexuality. By doing so, he demonstrates how experiences of embodiment are never universal but closely bound up with individual subject positions (such as sexuality and gender).

Citation

Riddell, F. (2021). ‘Now—For a Breath I Tarry’: Breath, Desire and Queer Materialism at the Fin de Siècle. In C. Saunders, D. Fuller, & J. Macnaughton (Eds.), The Life of Breath in Literature, Culture and Medicine: Classical to Contemporary (345-365). (1). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74443-4_17

Acceptance Date Jan 3, 2020
Online Publication Date Oct 2, 2021
Publication Date 2021
Deposit Date Oct 29, 2019
Publicly Available Date Oct 18, 2022
Publisher Palgrave Macmillan
Pages 345-365
Series Title Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
Edition 1
Book Title The Life of Breath in Literature, Culture and Medicine: Classical to Contemporary
ISBN 9783030744427
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74443-4_17

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