Cotton's queer relations same-sex intimacy and the literature of the southern plantation, 1936-1968

Bibler, Michael P. 1971- (Author).

Summary: "Finally breaking through heterosexual clichés of flirtatious belles and cavaliers, sinister black rapists and lusty "Jezebels, "Cotton's Queer Relations exposes the queer dynamics embedded in myths of the southern plantation. Focusing on works by Ernest J. Gaines, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman, Katherine Anne Porter, Margaret Walker, William Styron, and Arna Bontemps, Michael P. Bibler shows how each one uses figures of same-sex intimacy to suggest a more progressive alternative to the pervasive inequalities tied historically and symbolically to the South's most iconic institution.

Record details

ISBN: 9780813929842 (electronic bk.)
ISBN: 0813929849 (electronic bk.)
ISBN: 9780813927916
ISBN: 0813927919
ISBN: 9780813927923
ISBN: 0813927927
Physical Description: electronic resource
remote
1 online resource (x, 298 p.)
Publisher: Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2009.

Content descriptions

General Note:	Multi-User OldControl:muse9780813929842 Multi-User.
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (p. [269]-288) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Introduction: in the kitchens and on the verandas -- Nation and plantation between Gone with the wind and black power: the example of Ernest J. Gaines's Of love and dust -- Planters and lovers. Intraracial homoeroticism and the loopholes of taboo in William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! ; Homo-ness and fluidity in Tennessee Williams's Cat on a hot tin roof -- The southern kitchen romance. A queer sense of justice in Lillian Hellman's dramas of the Hubbard family ; Katherine Anne Porter, Margaret Walker, and the uncomfortable compromise of black women's autonomy -- The queer black fraternity. Sex, community, and rebellion in William Styron's The confessions of Nat Turner ; Arna Bontemps's Black thunder: between masculine politics and feminine difference -- Conclusion: on the southern plantation, real love is always ambivalent.
Source of Description Note:	Description based on print version record.