The American Byron: Homosexuality and the Fall of Fitz-Greene HalleckHailed in the mid-nineteenth century as the most important American poet of the period, Fitz-Greene Halleck was a close friend of William C. Bryant, an associate of Charles Dickens and Washington Irving, and a celebrity sought out by John Jacob Astor and American presidents. Halleck, an attractive man of wit and charm, was dubbed "the American Byron" because he both employed similar poetic strategies and challenged the most sacred institutions of his day. A large general readership enjoyed his verse, though it was infused with homosexual themes. Indeed, Halleck's love for another man would be fictionalized in Bayard Taylor's novel Joseph and His Friend a century before the Stonewall riots. |
From inside the book
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... marriage to a wealthy socialite . Halleck grew despondent in this competi- tion for Drake's affection and pulled away . But Drake's effort to include Halleck as a family member and his poems written to Halleck ( during the Drakes ...
... marriage and fatherhood . Instead , he revised national history in the countercultural lines of " Connecticut " ( a deconstruction of Puritan tyranny ) , " Red Jacket " ( a sarcastic tribute to the Native American ) , and " Wyoming ...
... marriage and a pederastic boy - worship reminiscent of classical homosexuality . It joined the rest of Halleck's work which " violates many of the fundamental rules of taste and art . " 27 It also coincided with the new sexual literacy ...
... marriage ( same - sex holy union ) . Melville's scatological figurativeness has more in common with the homo- sexual pattern of an earlier American period than his own . Colonial literature suggests that anal intercourse was the ...
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Contents
Shepherds of Sodomy | 17 |
Love and War | 42 |
The Widow Halleck | 67 |
Conquer and Divide | 92 |
A Return to Ganymede | 121 |
Halleck and His Friend | 151 |
Notes | 177 |
196 | |
217 | |