My reading habits as of late have led me to say 'Dickens was an asshole' more often, usually in public places. But it's usually along the conversational lines of "Dickens was an asshole...but here's this awesome stuff he did." Like he can't just get away scot-free. He's insanely revered anyway, and if I'm adding to that, I'm also adding the knowledge that after his wife gave him ten kids, he made fun of how fat she was to his friends.
Asshole.
I haven't really been near academia, aside from occasional emails to my professors, in yeears, so it's pretty damn fantastic to be reading a book by one scholar and have her be like "Of course in Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's book--" and I'm like "I KNOW THAT BOOK I READ THAT ONE CHAPTER THINGY THAT HAD TO DO WITH MY TOPIC." Because this topic is actually pretty narrow and all the scholars know each other and occasionally make fun of each other's theses and it becomes this super-nerdy in-joke type thing when you've read enough of their books. FUN.
ANYWAY. Quick preview of Queer Dickens: Furneaux's main idea seems to be that our idea of the nuclear family (mom/dad/kids) was not so much supported by the Victorian age, and in Dickens's works in particular there's a tremendous emphasis on ELECTIVE families, who frequently have no biological link to each other. So it's not so much a book about "Hey, look at how gay everything is" (which would be both incorrect and irritating), but rather with a broader definition of 'queer' that seems to mainly mean 'not heteronormative.'
But who wants to read posts with words like 'queer' and 'heteronormative'? Psh. I know why you guys're here.
Asshole.
I haven't really been near academia, aside from occasional emails to my professors, in yeears, so it's pretty damn fantastic to be reading a book by one scholar and have her be like "Of course in Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's book--" and I'm like "I KNOW THAT BOOK I READ THAT ONE CHAPTER THINGY THAT HAD TO DO WITH MY TOPIC." Because this topic is actually pretty narrow and all the scholars know each other and occasionally make fun of each other's theses and it becomes this super-nerdy in-joke type thing when you've read enough of their books. FUN.
ANYWAY. Quick preview of Queer Dickens: Furneaux's main idea seems to be that our idea of the nuclear family (mom/dad/kids) was not so much supported by the Victorian age, and in Dickens's works in particular there's a tremendous emphasis on ELECTIVE families, who frequently have no biological link to each other. So it's not so much a book about "Hey, look at how gay everything is" (which would be both incorrect and irritating), but rather with a broader definition of 'queer' that seems to mainly mean 'not heteronormative.'
But who wants to read posts with words like 'queer' and 'heteronormative'? Psh. I know why you guys're here.
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