The Columbia anthology of gay literature : readings from Western antiquity to the present day

B. Fone

In the three decades since New York City's Stonewall rebellion, gay literature has exploded as a distinctive form of cultural expression. In a variety of styles and genres, gay men have increasingly begun to articulate their sexual identities. At the same time, gay writers and scholars have begun in earnest the search for a literary history long denied by the refusal to recognize homosexual love as an integral part of Western literature. From the "Epic of Gilgamesh" to the poems of Allen Ginsberg and gay literature of the 1980s and '90s, "The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature" draws together hundreds of texts from Western literary history that describe experiences of love, friendship, intimacy, desire and sex among men. While other anthologies have focused primarily on poetry, drama or fiction, this volume includes a full range of genres. Spanning more than two millennia, from ancient Mesopotamia to the late 20th century, this anthology brings together the best-known texts of gay male writing such as the poetry of Martial and Walt Whitman, and excerpts from E.M. Forster's Maurice, as well as from lesser known works such as 19th-century English homoerotic poetry and selections from two early American novels of homosexual love - "Joseph and His Friend and Imre". In "The Columbia Anthology" readers become acquainted with the early bonds of male companionship found in Homer's writings on Zeus and Ganymede, and with the homoerotic poetry of Catullus and Juvenal. From Shakespeare's "Sonnets" to the philosophy of de Sade, to the political writings of Edmund White, this anthology traces a multifaceted tradition.