J.R.R. TOLKIEN’S CLASSIC WORK of fantasy literature The Hobbit has been enjoyed by millions of readers as a definitive story of escape. The book is equally cherished for the introduction of hobbits, an endearing variation on humanity. But the novel is much more psychologically profound and redolent with sexual symbolism than has been acknowledged by reviewers and Tolkien’s biographers.
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What, then, is the truth about the author’s treatment of homosexuality in the original The Lord of The Rings? Are Jackson’s films faithful to Tolkien’s vision, or do they augment the story with contemporary sexual attitudes? Equally engaging is the question of the life of Tolkien, and the role that homosexuality played in his relationships with men, especially his attachment to the author C. S. Lewis and the literary circle known as “The Inklings.”
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What emerges from a reinterpretation of Forster is a rich body of work in which numerous gay characters and same-sex relationships are presented.
MoreShakespeare defied the constraints of the Elizabethan era in numerous plays, such as Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, and Twelfth Night, which feature characters who violate the norms of gender or sexual behavior in their romantic relationships or their individual personae. In his cross-dressing comedies, such as Twelfth Night and As You Like It, gender rebellion and same-sex love are joyously intertwined.
MoreEVERY LANGUAGE makes assumptions and embodies biases so deeply embedded as to be invisible to its speakers. Every so often a cultural prejudice of this kind comes to light, as when people began to point out that English and many languages take for granted a gender dualism that’s typified by the third-person singular pronouns “he” and “she.” People who had once been silenced by this prejudice began to assert that this binary language did not correspond their sense of themselves as human beings.
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Physical human contact, or even proximity, could now be deadly. So what about dating? hooking up? sex outside the home? Surprisingly, Grindr, Scruff, and their ilk have not disappeared. In fact, reports indicate that they are as busy as ever, but in a different way. Welcome to dating without meeting, hooking up without being there, virtual Tuesday night orgies on group video. Some of the hookup and dating apps themselves have adapted, adding video links for users who are so inclined.
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Even before Covid, some venues were already greatly diminished by the predominance of the Internet, but they were still clinging to life, only to now get a huge kick into oblivion by the pandemic.
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The mask can refer to being closeted, disguised behind a false identity. During the Covid pandemic, masks have been politicized, as condoms were by abstinence-only homophobic religious activists during the AIDS plague.
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the house had books—books I’d been accumulating and hadn’t looked at in many years. A lot of them were in a bookcase I discovered only when a friend took an old recliner that I’d stashed on the porch long ago to the town dump. The moment he did, I realized it had been hiding a bookcase all these years, and in that bookcase were books I hadn’t looked at in ages. And that was how I began my own experience of the coronavirus lockdown: I read my way through it.
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Samuel Pozzi was every-where, like a Parisian Zelig. A brilliant surgeon, he had a following in Parisian society and affairs with some of his patients.
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