LGBTQ+ Literature in the West: From Ancient Times to the Twenty-First Century

A survey, within one volume, of the history of critical responses to LGBTQ literature from the beginning to the present day, this book explores changes in attitudes, literature and criticism over a period of two and a half thousand years. For various reasons it focuses on literature of ’the West’, trying to give readers a clear sense, within a relatively short compass, not only of the development of ’queer’ literature (perhaps the most encompassing of all terms) but especially of critical responses to that literature, notably during the past century and particularly the past fifty years.

All in all, this book offers a roadmap to much of the excellent scholarship concerning LGBTQ literature that has arisen in the last half-century - an era of unparalleled interest in the topic and an era that has moved the topic from the distant sidelines of literary study to a place ever closer to the center of things.

Robert C. Evans is I. B. Young Professor of English (emeritus) at Auburn University at Montgomery, USA. He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1984. In 1982 he began teaching at AUM, where he has been named Distinguished Research Professor, Distinguished Teaching Professor, and University Alumni Professor. External awards include fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and the Folger, Huntington, and Newberry Libraries. He is the author or editor of over sixty books and of more than four hundred essays, including recent work on various American writers.