Homosexuality in literature

Sandro Penna, an understudied Italian poet whose literary corpus is produced
during the end period and eventual fall of Italian fascism, writes Appunti, the second
volume of his major poetic corpus, from 1938-49. In it, he explicates a poetic of an
unapologetic, open homoeroticism that allows one to examine the obstacles a translator
faces in considering how one can remain faithful to the original poems and the identity
the poet creates. Keeping in mind theoretical influences informing the creation and
translation of poetry and the political choices inherent therein, my translations of these
poems mediate the content and form in the target text to maintain the importance of the
context in which the originals are written. This thesis and these translations aim to reexamine the importance of Penna as a poet, address the importance of translation in the
establishment of foreign poets, and develop a new perspective in Translation Studies that
considers the interdisciplinary applications of Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Using "The Fall of the House of Usher" as the principal, framework tale, this study illuminates Edgar Allan Poe's fictions from a perspective that focuses on homoerotic encounters. Since few prior studies have been directed at Poe's homosexual content, this thesis gives special attention to the benchmark criticism by D. H. Lawrence, which has long influenced readers' interpretations of sexual relationships in Poe's stories. This inquiry includes gender studies, especially the work of Leland S. Person, as well as queer theorist commentary on Poe and his contemporaries. It also deliberates on the definition of the queer aesthete provided by Alexander Doty and discusses how Poe's characters actually pre-date some assumptions about early appearances of the homosexual male in literature. Additionally, this thesis considers how writers who have been influenced by Poe tend to write texts that routinely provide fertile ground for the queer theorist.

Often overlooked in the nineteenth century Gothic novel are the complicated social issues existing within the text. In Emily Brontèe's Wuthering Heights and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae, the authors each create villains who represent the preoccupation with appropriate sexuality and conventional gender roles existing in Victorian England. Brontèe's Heathcliff and Stevenson's James Durie embody all that is immoral and non-normative in society with their depraved behavior ; however, because of the authors' craftiness with language, the authors, through their villains, manage to magnetize the other characters and subsequently emasculate those men in the text who emulate the Victorian ideal of masculinity. By focusing their novels on the plight of the Other and his disruption to the homogeneous rules regarding sexuality and gender in the nineteenth century, both authors articulate a profound understanding of the societal fears regarding these issues existing in their time.