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. |
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... never understood that he was intrinsically different from Drake . But Richard Henry Stoddard , who was also homosexual , provided insight into Halleck's distress over the wedding : " Clearly this Benedick [ Halleck , who is compared to ...
... never yet refused Virtues to a seeming wooer- Woman never yet abused Him who had been civil to her.23 The seeming suitor knows that the pretense of heterosexual interest suffi- ciently meets the social requirement . In another poem ...
... never known a man so independent of the moods and passions of his genera- tion . " 50 A critic of the speech reversed Taylor's intended compliment , countering , " Never did a man less represent the age in which he lived . " 51 That age ...