Article: Visits to dens of deceptive iniquity.(Queering the Underworld: Slumming, Literature, and the Undoing of Lesbian and Gay History)(Book review)

THIS SPRIGHTLY, informative book does a rare thing: it covers entirely new territory in gay literary studies. Queering the Underworld concentrates on the intersection of the fin de siecle phenomenon of "slumming"--that is, taking the bourgeois reader into the urban demimonde--and the emerging expression of gay and lesbian sexual identities. While there's no intrinsic logic to restricting himself to American sources, Herring persuades us that his study gains clarity and perspective through such a specific prism. Both canonical authors and the marginalized suitably take their place. Among the former are Djuna Barnes and Willa Cather, whose story "Paul's Case" (1905) has ...

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