The Gay and Lesbian Presence in American Literature ( esej )
Poslato: 28 Mar 2007, 02:26
by David Bergman
Towson State University
Unlike African American literature or Asian American literature or even Jewish American literature, the teaching of lesbian and gay literature does not necessarily require opening the canon to new authors. It does require, however, opening our eyes to what is already there. I can’t imagine teaching a course in American literature that entirely eliminated all lesbian and male homosexual writers. How could one get through a course completely silent about Walt Whitman, Henry James, Henry David Thoreau, H.D., Herman Melville, Elizabeth Bishop, James Baldwin, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Hart Crane, Allen Ginsberg, Gertrude Stein, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich? I suspect that all teachers of American literature assign at least some of these writers because the story of American literature can’t be told without acknowledging lesbian and gay writers, although it has often been told by ignoring that they were gay and lesbian and by omitting works that speak most clearly about their sexual orientation. The late Thomas Yingling wrote that gay male writers were permitted to speak but not to tell. It is also true of teachers of American literature we speak about these authors, but often we do not tell. Why this silence?
Ako nekog slucajno zainteresuje esej je jako zanimljiv:
http://www.georgetown.edu/tamlit/essays/gay_les.html
Towson State University
Unlike African American literature or Asian American literature or even Jewish American literature, the teaching of lesbian and gay literature does not necessarily require opening the canon to new authors. It does require, however, opening our eyes to what is already there. I can’t imagine teaching a course in American literature that entirely eliminated all lesbian and male homosexual writers. How could one get through a course completely silent about Walt Whitman, Henry James, Henry David Thoreau, H.D., Herman Melville, Elizabeth Bishop, James Baldwin, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Hart Crane, Allen Ginsberg, Gertrude Stein, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich? I suspect that all teachers of American literature assign at least some of these writers because the story of American literature can’t be told without acknowledging lesbian and gay writers, although it has often been told by ignoring that they were gay and lesbian and by omitting works that speak most clearly about their sexual orientation. The late Thomas Yingling wrote that gay male writers were permitted to speak but not to tell. It is also true of teachers of American literature we speak about these authors, but often we do not tell. Why this silence?
Ako nekog slucajno zainteresuje esej je jako zanimljiv:
http://www.georgetown.edu/tamlit/essays/gay_les.html
