ISBN: 0415914574

Are girls necessary?" asks Julie Abraham in this provocative study of 20th-century lesbian writing. Examining the development of lesbian writing in English across the 20th Century, Abraha… More...

Are girls necessary?" asks Julie Abraham in this provocative study of 20th-century lesbian writing. Examining the development of lesbian writing in English across the 20th Century, Abraham identifies a shift from this "romance" model to a more complicated "history" model. The great modernists, Woolf and Stein, as well as the popular writers of succeeding generations, like Mary Renault, looked to historical narratives, creating an important change in the way the "lesbian story" is built. The possibilities in lesbian writing, from the early romance plots through to the post-1960s liberation movement experiments, are Abraham's geography. Within it, she offers detailed readings of major writers in several genres, from high modern to pulp, both British and American. 20th century,american literature,classics,criticism and theory,fiction,gay and lesbian,gay and lesbian studies,history,history and criticism,humanities Gay & Lesbian, Routledge<

ISBN: 9780415914574

What do we read as "lesbian," and why? Have we been looking for love in too few places? In this first full-length study of modern lesbian writing, Julie Abraham challenges conve… More...

What do we read as "lesbian," and why? Have we been looking for love in too few places? In this first full-length study of modern lesbian writing, Julie Abraham challenges conventional assumptions about the dangers and pleasures of the coming together of lesbianism and literature. Who would lesbians be without the novel? What would modernism be without lesbian writers? Abraham reads the fevered female romances written by straight men as often as gay women. She also reads the works of high modernist and popular lesbian writers, from Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf to Mary Renault, who instead claimed history -- the ancient world, the New World, and war-torn twentieth-century Europe -- as their arena. Abraham offers accounts of major British and American writers, from the trials of Oscar Wilde to Stonewall, from the avant- garde to pulp fiction, from high cultural canons to bestseller lists. Are Girls Necessary? Abraham, Julie, Routledge<