Research Catalog

Lesbian scandal and the culture of modernism

Title

Lesbian scandal and the culture of modernism / Jodie Medd, Carleton University, Ottawa.

Author

Medd, Jodie, 1971-

Publication

Cambridge : New York : Cambridge University Press, 2012.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	JFE 13-1947	Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Description

ix, 254 pages; 24 cm

Summary

"Before lesbianism became a specific identity category in the West, its mere suggestion functioned as a powerful source of scandal in early twentieth-century British and Anglo-American culture. Reconsidering notions of the 'invisible' or 'apparitional' lesbian, Jodie Medd argues that lesbianism's representational instability, and the scandals it generated, rendered it an influential force within modern politics, law, art and the literature of modernist writers like James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Virginia Woolf. Medd's analysis draws on legal proceedings and parliamentary debates as well as crises within modern literary production - patronage relations, literary obscenity and cultural authority - to reveal how lesbian suggestion forced modern political, cultural and literary institutions to negotiate their own identities, ideals and limits. Medd's text will be of great interest to scholars and graduate students in gender and women's studies, modernist literary studies and English literature"--

Subjects

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: Extraordinary Allegations: Scandalous Lesbian Suggestion and the Culture of Modernism -- Part I. The Suggestion of Lesbianism and British National Culture: 1. The Suggestion of Lesbianism and the Great War: 'The Cult of the Clitoris' Scandal; 2. Lesbian Ghost Stories and Postwar Culture -- Part II. The Suggestion of Lesbianism and Modernist Communities: 3. Modernist Patronage, Literary Obscenity, and 'Doing the Lesbian Business'; 4. Bloomsbury and the Scandal of The Well of Loneliness -- Conclusion.

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