gay and lesbian literature
gay and lesbian literatureconsists of texts by homosexual/bisexual writers and texts amenable to gay/lesbian readings. The central controversy in the defining of gay literature concerns Shakespeare's sonnets ( 1609 ), the first 126 of which are addressed to a young man. Their homoeroticism was troublesome from the start: John Benson republished them in 1640 , leaving out some sonnets altogether and even heterosexualizing others by regendering their pronouns. Modern readers continue to debate whether the poems express platonic friendship or sexual love.
Most male homosexual writing in English before the 20th cent. is based on a narrow range of classical precedents: Plato's Symposium , the erotic epigrams of the Greek Anthology , the homosexual narratives from Ovid 's Metamorphoses. The English tradition of male friendship elegies invariably contains echoes of Theocritus ' Idylls and the second of...
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