Romantic Genius The Prehistory of a Homosexual Role [Paperback]

Andrew Elfenbein is associate professor of English at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.Surprisingly little has been written about homosexuality in British Romantic writing, and, similarly, little discussion has emerged about homosexual themes in the lives and poetic careers of the major Romantics. In Romantic Genius, Andrew Elfenbein explores the correspondence between the stereotypes applied to the "genius" and those applied to the homosexual, showing the centrality of disreputable desires to the works of Romantic male authors—from William Beckford to Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Blake—as well as to the writings of lesser-known but equally significant female authors of the period.In Romantic Genius, Andrew Elfenbein combines traditional Romantic author studies with the interpretive flexibility of queer theory. The result is a provocative study that will introduce some readers to lesser-known Romantic writers and texts, and demand that others see familiar figures in a new light.1. The Danger Zone: Effeminates, Geniuses, and Homosexuals
2. William Beckford and the Genius of Consumption
3. The Domestication of Genius: Cowper and the Rise of the Suburban Man
4. Anne Damers Sapphic Potential
5. Lesbianism and Romantic Genius: The Poetry of Anne Bannerman
6. Genius and the Blakean Ridiculous
7. A Sight to Dream of, Not to Tell: Christabel, Pornography, and Genius