Deep Gossip by Henry Abelove

Deep Gossip

Henry Abelove

Henry Abelove is an innovative literary critic, astute historian, and pioneer in gay and lesbian studies. In this long-awaited collection, which includes a new introduction, two new essays, and four of the most influential of his previously published articles, Abelove offers strikingly original and boldly interdisciplinary views on the connections between politics, culture, and sexuality in settings that range from eighteenth-century England to contemporary Salt Lake City and in figures as diverse as Henry David Thoreau, Sigmund Freud, and Frank O’Hara.

Abelove addresses the willful misreading of Freud’s views on homosexuality among American psychoanalysts; reconsiders sexual practice during England’s long eighteenth century; assesses the contemporary relevance of Thoreau’s Walden, particularly to queer politics; and traces the emergence of a distinctly queer critique of previous approaches to lesbian and gay history. In the first of the new essays, Abelove uncovers the origins and founding assumptions of American studies as a scholarly discipline; the second evaluates the impact of literature–specifically the same-sex eroticism found in works by such writers as James Baldwin, Elizabeth Bishop, Paul Bowles, and Ned Rorem–on the gay liberation movement of the 1970s.

Provocatively conceived, persuasively argued, and elegantly composed, the essays gathered in Deep Gossip confirm Henry Abelove’s reputation as one of America’s leading thinkers on the cultural politics of sexuality.

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