Catholic Figures, Queer Narratives

This new volume of essays examines the relationship between Catholicism and homosexuality. Why did so many literary Modernists embrace Catholicism? What is their relationship between historical homophobia and contemporary struggles between the Church and the homosexual? Moving from the Gothic to the late Twentieth-century, from Britain to America and France, Catholic Figures, Queer Narratives interrogates what is queer about Catholicism and what is modern about homosexuality. The result is a radical revision of the sacred - in life and art, the body and devotion.

This new volume of essays examines the relationship between Catholicism and homosexuality. Why did so many literary Modernists embrace Catholicism? What is their relationship between historical homophobia and contemporary struggles between the Church and the homosexual? Moving from the Gothic to the late Twentieth-century, from Britain to America and France, Catholic Figures, Queer Narratives interrogates what is queer about Catholicism and what is modern about homosexuality. The result is a radical revision of the sacred - in life and art, the body and devotion.

LOWELL GALLAGHER is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Medusa's Gaze: Casuistry and Conscience in the Renaissance as well as numerous articles on early modern English Catholicism, Shakespeare and postmodern ethics.

FREDERICK S. RODEN is Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of Same-Sex Desire in Victorian Religious Culture and the editor of Palgrave Advances in Oscar Wilde Studies.

PATRICIA JULIANA SMITH is Assistant Professor of English at Hofstra University. She is author of Lesbian Panic: Homoeroticism in Modern British Women's Fictions and has edited En Travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera; The Queer Sixties and The Book of Gay and Lesbian Quotations.