Victorian Literature, Queer Longing and the Shore, 1840–1920
Explores how shorelines inspired fluid understandings of sexuality and gender
- Uses a queer ecological approach to investigate poetry, prose, life writing and art in dialogue with coastal studies, the blue humanities, and women and gender studies
- Situates Victorian literature and culture in the context of coastal studies, an understudied area of the blue humanities
- Focuses on a variety of shorelines, including beaches, riverbanks and the southern bayou
- Shifts away from familiar Foucauldian approaches to focus on queer joy in writing and art about the shoreline
- Contributes to recent efforts to “undiscipline” Victorian Studies by engaging with scholarship from African American Studies, Black British Studies, and Indigenous Studies
This book studies how writers, artists and scientists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries thought about queerness through encounters at the water’s edge. Authors in this period witnessed dramatic and destructive changes to shorelines, including those caused by industrial pollution, the commercialisation of waterways and the rise of seaside tourism. Through an analysis of literary, cultural and visual texts, the book unearths a strand of ecological desire that merges better stewardship of the waters with an affirmation of sexual and gender diversity. It puts queer and feminist approaches in conversation with coastal studies and the blue humanities, and centres moments of multispecies joy.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Victorian Literature and the Queer Littoral
1. Queer Odysseus, Victorian Shores
2. New Women and Pleasure Boats
3. Of Venuses and Mermaids: Littoral Ekphrasis
4. A Queer Variety of Natural History
Coda: Neo-Victorianism at the Water’s Edge
Bibliography
In identifying and exploring a literary space she calls the “queer littoral”, Barbara Barrow locates at the Victorian seashore a key moment in the changing human relationship with the ocean. Drawing on recent work in blue humanities, littoral studies, queer theory, and other areas, Barrow combines deft textual analyses with a broad sense of how the queer littoral can help reshape our understanding of Victorian eco-poetics. A compelling re-reading of the episode of the lotus eaters in The Odyssey in ecological as well as queer terms germinates into a powerful lens on Victorian literary culture’s fascination with the beach. This book provides an illuminating extension of current practices in watery criticism. Readers interested in queer theory, blue humanities, and eco-poetics will find much of value here.
Barrow convincingly demonstrates that intimacy is always a more-than-human force. Her consideration of shoreline life in Victorian literatures offers a compelling engagement with a queer blue ecology, positioning it as essential to understanding – and appreciating – desire of any expression.
