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Music and the Queer Body in English Literature at the Fin de Siècle

Riddell, Fraser

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Abstract

Drawing on an ambitious range of interdisciplinary material, including literature, musical treatises and theoretical texts, Music and the Queer Body explores the central place music held for emergent queer identities in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Canonical writers such as Walter Pater, E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf are discussed alongside lesser-known figures such as John Addington Symonds, Vernon Lee and Arthur Symons. Engaging with a number of historical case studies, Fraser Riddell pays particular attention to the significance of embodiment in queer musical subcultures and draws on contemporary queer theory and phenomenology to show how writers associate music with shameful, masochistic and anti-humanist subject positions. Ultimately, this study reveals how literary texts at the fin de siècle invest music with queer agency: to challenge or refuse essentialist identities, to facilitate re-conceptions of embodied subjectivity, and to present alternative sensory experiences of space and time.

Citation

Riddell, F. (2022). Music and the Queer Body in English Literature at the Fin de Siècle. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989541

Book Type Monograph
Online Publication Date Apr 14, 2022
Publication Date 2022
Deposit Date Oct 29, 2019
Publicly Available Date May 13, 2022
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Series Title Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
ISBN 9781108839204
DOI https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989541

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Published Book (Introduction (pp.1-19)) (141 Kb)
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Introduction (pp.1-19) An online version of this work is published at doi.org/10.1017/9781108989541 under a Creative
Commons Open Access license CC-BY-NC 4.0 which permits re-use, distribution and reproduction
in any medium for non-commercial purposes providing appropriate credit to the original work is given
and any changes made are indicated. To view a copy of this license visit https://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-nc/4.0




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