Hellenism and Homosexuality in Victorian Oxford: American Thought and Culture in the 1960s

by Linda Dowling

In April 1895, Oscar Wilde stood in the prisoner's dock of the Old Bailey, charged with "acts of gross indecency with another male person. These filthy practices, the prosecutor declared, posed a deadly threat to English society, "a sore which cannot fail in time to corrupt and taint it all." Wilde responded with a speech of legendary eloquence, defending love between men as a love "such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare." Electrified, the spectators in the courtroom burst into applause.

Although Wilde was ultimately imprisoned, the courtroom response to his speech signaled a revolutionary moment-the emergence into the public sphere of a kind of love that had always been proscribed in English culture. In this luminous work of intellectual history, Linda Dowling offers the first detailed account of Oxford Hellenism, the Victorian philosophical and literary movement that made possible Wilde's brief triumph and anticipated the modern possibility of homosexuality as a positive social identity.

A homosocial culture and a language of moral legitimacy for homosexuality emerged, Dowling argues, as unforeseen consequences of Oxford University reform. Through their search in Plato and Greek literature for a transcendental value that might substitute for a lost Christian theology, such liberal reformers as Benjamin Jowett unintentionally created a cultural context in which male love-the "spiritual procreancy" celebrated in Plato's Symposium-might be both experienced and justified in ideal terms. Dowling traces the institutional career of Hellenism from its roots in Oxford reform through its blossoming in an approach to Greek studies that came to operate as a code for homosexuality. Recreating the incidents, controversies, and scandals that heralded the growth of Hellenism, Dowling provides a new cultural and theoretical context within which to read writers as diverse as Wilde, Jowett, John Addington Symonds, Walter Pater, Lord Alfred Douglas, Robert Buchanan, and W. H. Mallock.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Victorian, LGBT, Academia, Gender and Sexuality, Queer

192 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Keelia]

yeah of course I loved this

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

The ABSOLUTE must read for all in the LGBT community. Presents to artistic/political struggle between the creative world and the world of family values. It lights the way from the French Revolution to Stonewall.

[Miri · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very thorough and well-written study of homosexuality in the 19th century. I really enjoyed this book despite having read it mainly for research purposes. Very much recommend it to those interested in Oscar Wilde, Alfred Douglas, Arthur Symonds or Walter Pater. A must-read for those interested in 19th century literary queerness.

[C. B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is essential for anyone interested in how Hellenism and homoeroticism interrelated in the thought of John Addington Symonds, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and others. Dowling frames this in a broader Hellenising trend at Oxford in the mid-nineteenth century, represented by Benjamin Jowett and Matthew Arnold. A terrific short monograph.

[christina]

usually wouldnt add books for research but we’re in dire straits w this reading goal

[Michelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is unreadable - typos from the very first page and sentences that run on for so long, the original point is lost! Who edited this, I wonder. The numeral "1" is even used in place of a capital "I" in an early instance. Unbelievable.

To me, it reads like the average undergraduate's research paper: Plenty of cited sources but nothing new to say or add to the topic.

[Drianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this. Very clear, not overly bogged down in theory, lots of helpful close reading of texts.

[Andre · Rating 1 out of 5]

I stopped reading this before, I was even at a quarter of the book.
In the first chapter about 75% of the cases is "blablablablablabla" all the time. If this was all about explaining what "effeminatus" means in the Victorian contexted (aka everyone not adhering to the masculine ideal) then why on earth all this talk about Oscar Wilde and how great he was and what all these others did? Its almost as if the author is in love with her own writing.
Afterwards, I was several pages into the chapter on victorian masculinity and still had no idea what it is. The author was endlessly talking and talking and yet it all seems to be pointless. No idea why others praise it so much. I just couldn't go on with this.

[Micha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite an excellent account of the Greats curriculum in Oxford and the self-recognition and legitimation Victorian Oxford men could find in the same-sex leanings of the respectable Ancient Greeks.

One strange thing I find in Oxford, and part of this is related to the nature of my own research, is just how self-celebratory it is. I don't think anybody talks about Ruskin and Pater as much as scholars in the English Faculty here do. I actually feel like somebody has said, "Yo, I heard you like Oxford..."

[leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was an overwhelmed grad. student's dream come true. Dowling's argument is coherent, her writing is clear, and she includes history efficiently so that you remember after you've finished reading.

[Alasdair Ekpenyong · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that makes you say, "So what is real, then?"

[Roxie]

This was very informative, if a bit dry. Dowling's research is exhaustive and explained clearly.