The Homosexual Revival of Renaissance Style, 1850–1930

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

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2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Yvonne Ivory

      Pages 1-10

3. Reviving Renaissance Individualism

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 11-11

      PDF

   2. Consummate Criminals: Nineteenth-Century Renaissance Historiography and the Homosexual

      • Yvonne Ivory

      Pages 13-48

   3. Individualist Inverts: Self-Realization as a Liberatory Sexual Discourse at the Turn of the Century

      • Yvonne Ivory

      Pages 49-80

4. Styling Queer Personalities

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 81-81

      PDF

   2. Poison, Passion, and Personality: Oscar Wilde’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning

      • Yvonne Ivory

      Pages 83-108

   3. The Erotics of Fame; or, How Thomas Mann Conquered the Renaissance

      • Yvonne Ivory

      Pages 109-136

   4. Orlando Emergent: Vita Sackville-West’s Renaissance Personae

      • Yvonne Ivory

      Pages 137-152

   5. Conclusion

      • Yvonne Ivory

      Pages 153-156

5. Back Matter

   Pages 157-240

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Why were so many late-nineteenth-century homosexuals passionate about the Italian Renaissance? This book answers that question by showing how the Victorian coupling of criminality with self-fashioning under the sign of the Renaissance provided queer intellectuals with an enduring model of ruthlessly permissive individualism.

• bibliography
• discourse
• historiography
• individual
• Italy
• knowledge
• model
• Renaissance
• Renaissance Style
• style
• Thomas Mann
• Victorian era
• British and Irish Literature

'The Homosexual Revival of Renaissance Style is an engaging book, in which the author handles an impressive variety of material, which spans historiography, sexology, biography and literary texts. Academics and students interested in the history of sexuality will find in it a persuasive and welcome addition to the recent scholarship on the ancient Greek roots of nineteenth-century male homoerotic writing.' - Stefano Evangelista, Ravenna

'her [Ivory's] unilateral, comparative approach brings many previously hidden lines of investigation into view...the sheer sweep of material, both mainstream and marginal, is impressive as Ivory melds literary texts and sexology with historiography and biography...[an] undoubtedly valuable work. By a fusion of cultural history with textual readings, close analysis of British and German sexology, and detailed evaluations of the roles of three key figures across genders and nationalities, Ivory consolidates the importance of the Renaissance in the queer self-fashioning of modern gender identities.' - Nick Kneale, Modern Language Notes

YVONNE IVORY is Assistant Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA. She has taught at SDSU, Duke University, University College Dublin, and the Ruhr University. Her research focuses on the nexus between sexuality and aesthetics, and she has published articles on fin-de-siècle German anarchism, on aestheticism, and on Oscar Wilde's German reception.

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