The Gothic Novel and the Negotiation of Homophobia.pdf

This essay considers the critical commonplace that classic Gothic narratives such as The Monk and Carmilla are transparent windows onto the state of homophobia during their moments of production. It traces how, in the case of The Monk, readers have been prone to read for the novelist\u27s fear that his own sexuality will somehow be discovered, whereas the novel more accurately makes an intervention in heteronormative sex as the object of its parody. Carmilla, conversely, often finds its relatively straight-forward narrative of lesbian desire displaced by lesbianism\u27s more metonymic associations with race and empire; to read for the lesbian in Le Fanu\u27s text is often to find her missing