Considering the significant presence of literature (and literary personalities) in the construction of "romantic friendship," no single chapter is going to give more than a teaser on the topic. After this, there are two more chapters that fall within the pre-20th century scope of the Project, then I'll probably have one final entry that simply lists the titles of the later articles. I'd meant to finish this up a bit more promptly, but the day-job has been grueling for the last couple weeks.
LHMP
Blog entry
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 269 - On the Shelf for October 2023 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2023/10/07 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for October 2023.
Publications on the Blog
OK, this is that weird out-of-order article on gothic literature from The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature. I posted it previoiusly as a simple blog item and now it's repeated as a regular LHMP entry. Sorry for the redundancy, but it's how I keep my life organized in systematic fashion.
Another chapter from The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature that gives only a passing nod to the existence of women as anything other than an adjunct to men't lives. I'd meant to push on more rapidly with these, but unexpectedly my day-job wanted me on-site for most of the week. And so it goes. Next up is the chapter on gothic literature that I already posted, which will be re-posted within the LHMP framework.
Hey, my blog, my rules. If an article in a collection is pretty much designed to ignore the existence of women, then I'm not going to spend a lot of pixels on it unless it's genuinely snark-worthy.
I thought a lot about my podcast series on favorite tropes while summarizing this article. Particularly about gendered tropes. I have several topics on the to-do list for that series that deal with pairings of character types such as "the rake and the wallflower" which feed nicely into the question of how such tropes work differently for female couples. There were a couple of references for this chapter that touch on the category of "female rake" that I'll need to track down for when I address that character trope in the podcast.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 268 – Lesbian Gothics, Gothic Lesbians - transcript
Another pleasant surprise -- more focus on the appearance of female homoeroticism as a result of cross-dressing plots, when I expected the article would be mostly about the homoerotic potential of boy actors playing female roles. I was planning to put this blog off another day so I wouldn't release it on top of the podcast, but I've been sluggish about getting this weekend's podcast out and decided the world won't end if I release it next Saturday, since I've already committed to delaying the September fiction episode a month due to narrator scheduling.
It sort of figures that the second chapter of this book that solidly focuses on women is, functionally, a recap of a book I've already covered. I mean: it's a great book! But it means there isn't really anything new here in terms of the Project.
I actually had hopes for this article once I started reading it but, well, to sum up: "Goldberg manages the feat of discussing the exclusion of women from literary history without actually managing to include them."
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