Lesbian Scandal and the Culture of Modernism

Jodie Medd

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139128827

Before lesbianism became a specific identity category in the West, its mere suggestion functioned as a powerful source of scandal in early twentieth-century British and Anglo-American culture. Reconsidering notions of the 'invisible' or 'apparitional' lesbian, Jodie Medd argues that lesbianism's representational instability, and the scandals it generated, rendered it an influential force within modern politics, law, art and the literature of modernist writers like James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Virginia Woolf. Medd's analysis draws on legal proceedings and parliamentary debates as well as crises within modern literary production - patronage relations, literary obscenity and cultural authority - to reveal how lesbian suggestion forced modern political, cultural and literary institutions to negotiate their own identities, ideals and limits. Medd's text will be of great interest to scholars and graduate students in gender and women's studies, modernist literary studies and English literature.

'This is a highly original and very engaging book about a fascinating aspect of modernism. It deserves a wide readership.'

Petra Rau Source: Women: A Cultural Review

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Lesbian Scandal and the Culture of Modernism

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Contents

Lesbian Scandal and the Culture of Modernism - Half title page
pp i-ii

Lesbian Scandal and the Culture of Modernism - Title page
pp iii-iii

Copyright page
pp iv-iv

Contents
pp v-vi

Acknowledgments
pp vii-x

Introduction - Extraordinary Allegations:
pp 1-24

Part One - The Suggestion of Lesbianism and British National Culture
pp 25-114

Chapter 1 - The Suggestion of Lesbianism and the Great War:
pp 27-75

Chapter 2 - Lesbian Ghost Stories and Postwar Culture
pp 76-114

Part Two - The Suggestion of Lesbianism and Modernist Communities
pp 115-198

Chapter 3 - Modernist Patronage, Literary Obscenity, and “Doing the Lesbian Business”
pp 117-150

Chapter 4 - Bloomsbury and the Scandal ofThe Well of Loneliness
pp 151-191

Conclusion
pp 192-198

Notes
pp 199-244

Index
pp 245-254

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Lesbian Scandal and the Culture of Modernism

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