Course outline
Module 1
Module 1: Foundations: Early Queer Voices in Literature
Foundations: Early Queer Voices in Literature
Knowledge check
Q1. Which ancient Greek poet is most often cited as an early example of love poetry addressed to people of the same sex?
- A. Homer
- B. Sappho ✓
- C. Hesiod
- D. Pindar
Why: Sappho of Lesbos (c. 620 BCE) wrote lyric poems expressing desire for women, and her name gave rise to the word 'sapphic.' Homer and Hesiod are epic poets, and Pindar wrote victory odes, none of which center on same-sex desire.
Q2. The Greek word 'Lesbian,' now used as a sexual identity term, derives from which place associated with Sappho?
- A. Crete
- B. Athens
- C. Lesbos ✓
- D. Corinth
Why: Sappho was born and worked on the island of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea, and the word 'lesbian' comes from the island's name. The other locations have no direct link to her poetry.
Q3. Which Renaissance English playwright wrote sonnets addressed to a young man, many of which express intense emotional and physical longing?
- A. Christopher Marlowe
- B. Ben Jonson
- C. William Shakespeare ✓
- D. Thomas Kyd
Why: Shakespeare's Sonnets 1 through 126 are addressed to a young man, and scholars continue to debate the nature of that relationship. While Marlowe's work also contains homoerotic themes, the sonnet sequence is Shakespeare's.
Q4. Which 1892 novella, published in English, is often cited as one of the earliest works of Anglophone fiction to depict a lesbian relationship sympathetically?
- A. Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness
- B. Vernon Lee's Vanitas
- C. Violet Paget's Ottilie: An Eighteenth-Century Idyl ✓
- D. Edward Carpenter's Love's Coming-of-Age
Why: Vernon Lee was the pen name of Violet Paget, whose 1883 Ottilie: An Eighteenth-Century Idyl is a notable early depiction of female same-sex desire. The best answer here reflects this early work, which predates the more famous Well of Loneliness (1928) and Carpenter's essays.
Q5. Walt Whitman's poetry collection that went through many editions and included the 'Calamus' cluster is titled what?
- A. Leaves of Grass ✓
- B. Song of Myself
- C. Drum-Taps
- D. Specimen Days
Why: 'Calamus' is a section within Leaves of Grass, first published in 1860, which contains poems of comradeship and male intimacy. 'Song of Myself' is a single poem within that collection, while Drum-Taps and Specimen Days are separate works.
Module 2
Module 2: Coded Desire: Subtext and Survival in Print
Coded Desire: Subtext and Survival in Print
Knowledge check
Q1. In the context of queer literature before the mid-twentieth century, what does the term 'coded desire' most commonly refer to?
- A. Explicit descriptions of same-sex relationships published openly in mainstream magazines
- B. Same-sex attraction expressed through indirect hints, symbols, and subtext that could evade censorship and social condemnation
- C. Cryptographic messages hidden inside novels by authors working for secret societies
- D. Sexual content deliberately removed from later editions of classic texts
Q2. Why did many nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers rely on subtext rather than direct depiction when portraying queer characters?
- A. Publishers were legally required to avoid all mention of sexuality in fiction
- B. Obscenity laws, publishers' fears, and social stigma made explicit portrayal risky for both authors and their work
- C. Readers at the time were unable to understand any romantic content
- D. Subtext was considered a more prestigious literary style than direct statement
Q3. Which of the following is a common device used in coded queer writing to signal a character's nonconforming desire to attentive readers?
- A. Footnotes that explicitly define the character's sexual orientation
- B. Stereotyped traits, such as a character who is an isolated outsider, a 'confirmed bachelor,' or someone whose intense friendships hint at more
- C. Chapter titles that list the characters' romantic partners
- D. Appendices containing letters that openly confess desire
Q4. What is a key risk that a 'queer reading' of a text can involve, according to careful literary scholars?
- A. It always reveals the author's secret diaries
- B. It can impose modern identity categories onto historical works and overlook their original contexts, so readers should weigh evidence rather than assume
- C. It makes the text legally unpublishable
- D. It requires the reader to know the author personally
Q5. What does 'survival' in the phrase 'subtext and survival in print' refer to?
- A. The physical survival of queer authors who were imprisoned for their writing in every case
- B. The ability of queer works and the meanings within them to endure censorship and reach readers who recognized them, often across generations
- C. The commercial survival of publishers who specialized in erotica
- D. The survival of manuscripts that were destroyed by fire in archives
Module 3
Module 3: The Modernist Turn: Experiment and Identity
The Modernist Turn: Experiment and Identity
Knowledge check
Q1. Which modernist novel, published in 1928, is widely read as an early English-language novel centering lesbian identity and was subject to an obscenity trial in Britain?
- A. Ulysses by James Joyce
- B. The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall ✓
- C. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
- D. Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
Why: Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness (1928) follows Stephen Gordon, a lesbian protagonist, and was banned in Britain for obscenity after a highly publicized trial. Ulysses was also censored but does not center queer identity, and Orlando and Nightwood, while queer in important ways, were not the focus of that trial.
Q2. In Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1928), what experimental feature allows the title character to live across several centuries?
- A. A dream sequence that lasts the entire novel
- B. A character who is revealed to be an immortal vampire
- C. A sudden and unexplained change of sex that the narrative accepts without comment ✓
- D. A narrator who travels through time in a machine
Why: Orlando changes from a man to a woman partway through the book and continues living for centuries, with the narrative treating the transformation matter-of-factly. Woolf used this fantastical device to explore gender fluidity and the constructed nature of identity.
Q3. Which modernist technique, associated with writers like Joyce and Woolf, renders characters' unspoken thoughts and sensations in a continuous flow?
- A. Epistolary structure
- B. Stream of consciousness ✓
- C. Frame narrative
- D. Free indirect discourse only in dialogue
Why: Stream of consciousness presents the flow of a character's thoughts directly on the page, often without conventional punctuation or logical sequence. This technique let modernist writers depict interiority and desire in ways that could evade the explicit censorship of the period.
Q4. Why did many early twentieth-century queer writers use coded language, symbolism, and indirect references?
- A. Because modernist aesthetics required ambiguity in all subjects
- B. Because obscenity laws and social stigma made explicit depictions of homosexuality difficult to publish ✓
- C. Because they lacked the vocabulary to describe their own experiences
- D. Because publishers preferred stories set in foreign countries
Why: Obscenity laws such as Britain's and the United States' Comstock-era restrictions, along with strong social stigma, pressured writers to encode queer desire through allusion, symbolism, and omission. This coded style became a defining feature of much queer modernist writing.
Q5. Djuna Barnes's novel Nightwood (1936) is known for which distinctive stylistic quality?
- A. Plain, journalistic prose with minimal metaphor
- B. Dense, lyrical, and highly ornate language with dark, baroque imagery ✓
- C. Entirely comic dialogue with no narrative description
- D. A strict adherence to chronological order and realism
Why: Nightwood is celebrated for its richly figurative, almost incantatory prose and its gothic, decadent atmosphere, which fit its portrayal of desire, loss, and outsider characters in interwar Paris and New York. Its style is a central part of its experimental modernism.
Module 4
Module 4: Mid-Century Shadows: Postwar Queer Writing
Mid-Century Shadows: Postwar Queer Writing
Knowledge check
Q1. Which 1952 novel by Patricia Highsmith, published under a pseudonym, is widely regarded as one of the first American queer novels with a happy ending?
- A. The Price of Salt ✓
- B. Giovanni's Room
- C. City of Night
- D. Another Country
Why: The Price of Salt (1952), published initially under the pseudonym Claire Morgan, follows a romance between two women and is notable for its hopeful conclusion, which contrasted sharply with the tragic endings typical of queer fiction at the time.
Q2. James Baldwin's 1956 novel Giovanni's Room is set primarily in which city?
- A. New York
- B. Berlin
- C. Paris ✓
- D. London
Why: Giovanni's Room is set largely in Paris, where the American narrator David grapples with his relationship with the Italian bartender Giovanni and with his own repressed sexuality.
Q3. What does the term 'the closet' refer to in postwar queer writing and life?
- A. A literal storage space in apartments where queer people hid
- B. The practice of concealing one's sexual orientation or gender identity from others ✓
- C. A legal term for private property used in sodomy cases
- D. A literary device in which characters hide letters or diaries
Why: 'The closet' describes the concealment of queer identity, a central experience and metaphor in mid-century queer life and writing, especially given the legal and social dangers of being openly queer in the 1940s and 1950s.
Q4. Which federal action in the United States, beginning in 1953, led to the dismissal of many gay and lesbian government employees, fueling the 'Lavender Scare'?
- A. Executive Order 10450 ✓
- B. The Smith Act
- C. The Comstock Act
- D. The McCarran Act
Why: Executive Order 10450, signed by President Eisenhower in 1953, barred gay and lesbian people from federal employment on the grounds of 'sexual perversion,' contributing to the Lavender Scare, a period of intense persecution of queer people in government.
Q5. Which mid-century American writer's 1957 novel On the Road, though not explicitly queer in its main narrative, has been read by critics for its homoerotic undercurrents and its place in the Beat movement?
- A. Allen Ginsberg
- B. Jack Kerouac ✓
- C. William S. Burroughs
- D. Gore Vidal
Why: Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road (published 1957), a Beat classic whose intense male friendships and homoerotic undercurrents have drawn critical attention, even though Kerouac himself did not openly identify as gay.
Module 5
Module 5: Liberation and Literary Rebellion
Liberation and Literary Rebellion
Knowledge check
Q1. Which term describes the broad, reclaimed umbrella for people whose sexual orientation or gender identity falls outside heterosexual and cisgender norms?
- A. Heteronormative
- B. Queer ✓
- C. Canonical
- D. Epistolary
Why: 'Queer' was once a slur but has been reclaimed as an inclusive term for sexual and gender minorities. The other options describe unrelated literary or social concepts: 'heteronormative' names the assumption that heterosexuality is the default, 'canonical' refers to works regarded as central to a tradition, and 'epistolary' describes fiction told through letters.
Q2. Which 1928 novel, a landmark of early lesbian literature, was put on trial for obscenity in England, shaping debates about censorship of queer themes?
- A. Orlando
- B. The Well of Loneliness ✓
- C. Giovanni's Room
- D. Maurice
Why: Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness was banned in England after a 1928 obscenity trial. Its suppression became a symbol of the censorship faced by queer writers. Orlando (1928) by Virginia Woolf is playful and gender-fluid but was not prosecuted, Giovanni's Room (1956) was by James Baldwin, and Maurice was published posthumously by E. M. Forster in 1971.
Q3. Which writer's 1956 novel Giovanni's Room explored gay male desire and was published during a period when such themes were heavily stigmatized?
- A. Audre Lorde
- B. Allen Ginsberg
- C. James Baldwin ✓
- D. Gore Vidal
Why: James Baldwin wrote Giovanni's Room in 1956, a novel centered on an American man's relationship with an Italian bartender in Paris. Its frank treatment of homosexuality was daring for its time. Audre Lorde was a poet known for work on Black feminist and lesbian identity, Ginsberg was a Beat poet, and Vidal was a novelist who also wrote openly about gay characters, but the 1956 novel is Baldwin's.
Q4. In literary terms, what does 'rebellion' most often mean in queer literature focused on liberation?
- A. Writing that conforms to established social expectations
- B. Writing that challenges oppressive norms and imagines alternative ways of living
- C. Writing that avoids any mention of identity
- D. Writing that is strictly limited to historical documentation
Q5. Why do many queer writers historically use coded language, allegory, or subtext in their work?
- A. Because subtle writing is always considered more artistic
- B. Because censorship, legal persecution, and social stigma often made open depiction dangerous ✓
- C. Because queer themes can only be expressed in poetry
- D. Because readers rarely notice explicit content
Why: Coded language, allegory, and subtext were strategies writers used to evade censorship, obscenity laws, and social punishment while still communicating queer experience to sympathetic readers. Such techniques were a form of survival and resistance, not merely an aesthetic preference.
Module 6
Module 6: Queer Poetics: Form, Voice, and Self
Queer Poetics: Form, Voice, and Self
Knowledge check
Q1. In queer poetics, which of the following best describes the idea of 'coded' or 'veiled' language?
- A. Poetry written exclusively in cipher or secret alphabets
- B. The use of metaphor, allusion, or ambiguous imagery to express same-sex desire when open statement was dangerous or unacceptable ✓
- C. Verse that has been encrypted by the poet to prevent publication
- D. Strict adherence to rhyme schemes that hide the poem's meaning from readers
Why: Coded language refers to strategies of indirection, such as metaphor, allusion, and ambiguity, that let queer poets express desire or identity while managing censorship, social stigma, or personal risk.
Q2. What does the term 'persona' most often refer to in lyric poetry, and why is it significant for queer poets?
- A. The poet's legal name printed on the book cover
- B. A speaking voice distinct from the poet's own identity, which can allow exploration of desire or identity in a mediated way ✓
- C. The publisher's branding of a poet's collected works
- D. A required biographical introduction placed before a poem
Why: A persona is the speaker constructed within a poem. Queer poets have used personae to explore subjects and desires they could not or did not want to assert directly under their own name, adding layers of voice and self-presentation.
Q3. Which formal choice is frequently associated with queer poetics as a way of disrupting conventional expectations?
- A. Strictly following the Petrarchan sonnet without variation
- B. Deliberately breaking syntax, pronoun conventions, or genre expectations to challenge normative ideas of gender and desire ✓
- C. Writing only in the third person to avoid any personal voice
- D. Avoiding line breaks entirely in favor of prose paragraphs
Why: Many queer poets use formal experimentation, such as shifting pronouns, fragmenting syntax, or hybridizing genres, to resist fixed categories of identity and to reflect the fluid or non-normative character of queer experience.
Q4. What is meant by 'the closet' as a concept in discussions of queer literature and voice?
- A. A literal storage space mentioned in many novels
- B. The condition of concealing one's sexual orientation or gender identity, which shapes how queer writers choose to reveal or hide themselves in their work ✓
- C. A poetic form consisting of couplets arranged in stanzas
- D. The private diary kept by a poet before publication
Why: The closet is a metaphor for concealment of queer identity. It shapes questions of voice and self-disclosure, influencing how writers encode, reveal, or obscure their identities in their texts.
Q5. Why do critics often emphasize the 'self' in queer poetics as something constructed rather than simply discovered?
- A. Because poets are legally required to invent new identities
- B. Because queer identity is understood as shaped through language, performance, and social context, so the poetic self is actively made through form and voice ✓
- C. Because all poetry is autobiographical in a literal sense
- D. Because the self can only exist in prose, not in verse
Why: Queer theory often treats identity as performative and socially constituted. In poetics, this means the self on the page is produced through choices of voice, form, and address, rather than being a fixed, pre-existing truth waiting to be transcribed.
Module 7
Module 7: Contemporary Narratives: Plurality and the Future
Contemporary Narratives: Plurality and the Future
Knowledge check
Q1. In queer literature, what does the term 'plurality' most commonly refer to in contemporary narratives?
- A. The use of multiple narrators to tell a single story in chronological order
- B. The representation of diverse identities, experiences, and forms of desire within and across a text ✓
- C. A strict adherence to a single genre such as the novel or memoir
- D. The translation of a work into several languages at once
Why: Plurality in contemporary queer narratives refers to the inclusion of a wide range of identities, experiences, and forms of desire, resisting a single, monolithic story of queer life.
Q2. Which element is most characteristic of contemporary queer narratives that focus on the future?
- A. A return to nostalgic depictions of pre-liberation eras
- B. Imagining queer futures in which people can live, love, and belong on their own terms ✓
- C. Avoiding any discussion of community or collective life
- D. Presenting queer characters only as tragic figures who die by the end
Why: Many contemporary queer works imagine futures where queer people flourish, building on the idea that futurity is a central concern for queer writing and thought.
Q3. Why do many contemporary queer writers resist a single, unified definition of queer identity?
- A. Because queer identity has no connection to lived experience
- B. Because identities intersect with race, class, gender, disability, and geography in varied ways ✓
- C. Because publishers require characters to fit into one category
- D. Because the term queer was abandoned decades ago
Why: Contemporary writers emphasize intersectionality, recognizing that queer experiences differ significantly depending on other aspects of a person's identity and circumstances.
Q4. What is the significance of 'the future' as a theme in queer literary studies?
- A. It suggests that queer people have no stake in long-term social change
- B. It reflects the idea that queer life has often been denied a future and that writing can imagine and create one ✓
- C. It refers only to science fiction set on other planets
- D. It indicates a rejection of all narrative structure
Why: Queer theorists have examined how queer people have been excluded from ideas of reproductive and social futurity, and literature offers a space to imagine and claim alternative futures.
Q5. Which approach best describes a 'guided tour' of queer literature as a teaching method?
- A. Reading only one canonical novel in full detail
- B. Surveying a range of works and perspectives to show the field's diversity and development ✓
- C. Memorizing dates of publication without discussing content
- D. Focusing exclusively on critics' biographies
Why: A guided tour introduces students to a broad range of texts, authors, and critical perspectives, highlighting how the field has grown and diversified over time.