Gender Protest and Same-Sex Desire in Antebellum American Literature

Download or read book Gender Protest and Same-Sex Desire in Antebellum American Literature written by Dr David Greven and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2014-03-28 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expanding our understanding of the possibilities and challenges inherent in the expression of same-sex desire, Greven identifies a pattern of what he calls ‘gender protest’ in the writings of Margaret Fuller, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. As Greven shows, antebellum authors took up the taboo subjects of same-sex desire and female sexuality and were adept in their use of a variety of rhetorical means for expressing the inexpressible.