Queer Reading Practices and Sexology in Fin-de-Sicle Literature

This book scrutinises the production and transnational distribution of sexological knowledge at the turn of the century. The works of three transnationally mobile authors are in the focus: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890/91) and Teleny (1893) by, and attributed to, Oscar Wilde; The True Story of a Vampire (1894) by Count Stanislaus Eric Stenbock, and Imre: A Memorandum (1906) by Edward Prime-Stevenson. The textual analysis is governed by references in all four works to Hungarian culture to demonstrate how they conceptualised Hungarianness and same-sex desire simultaneously in light of the new classificatory science of sexualities coming from German-speaking Central Europe. By foregrounding a timely literary angle and a culturalist approach, this book offers non-Anglocentric insights, not bound by either language or nationality, to shed new light on the interdisciplinary reading practices of late-Victorian subjects and the ways they contributed to the emergence of fin-de-sicle queer fiction.