Lovers and Beloveds : Sexual Otherness in Southern Fiction, 1936-1961

G. Richards

A challenge to traditional criticism, this study demonstrates that issues of sexuality - and same-sex desire in particular - were of central importance in the literary production of the Southern Renaissance. Especially during the 1940s and 1950s, the national literary establishment tacitly designated the South as an allowable setting for fictionalized deviancy, thus permitting southern writers tremendous freedom to explore sexual otherness. In Lovers and Beloveds, Gary Richards draws on contemporary theories of sexuality in reading the fiction of six writers of the era who accepted that potentially pejorative characterization as an opportunity: Truman Capote, William Goyen, Harper Lee, Carson McCullers, Lillian Smith, and Richard Wright.