ENGL 4350: Radicalism and British Modernism: Forster

Groundbreaking biography that sees Forster’ sexuality as central to his imaginative life; employs much new archival evidence." RRB
With the posthumous publication of his long-suppressed novel "Maurice "in 1970, E. M. Forster came out as a homosexual-- though that revelation made barely a ripple in his literary reputation. As Wendy Moffat persuasively argues in "A Great Unrecorded History," Forster's homosexuality was the central fact of his life. Between Wilde's imprisonment and the Stonewall riots, Forster led a long, strange, and imaginative life as a gay man. He preserved a vast archive of his private life--a history of gay experience he believed would find its audience in a "happier "time. "A Great Unrecorded History "is a biography of the heart. Moffat's decade of detective work--including first-time interviews with Forster's friends--has resulted in the first book to integrate Forster's public and private lives. Seeing his life through the lens of his sexuality offers us a radically new view--revealing his astuteness as a social critic, his political bravery, and his prophetic vision of gay intimacy. "A Great Unrecorded History "invites us to see Forster-- and modern gay history--from a completely new angle.

Malik, Charu. 'To Express the Subject of Friendship: Masculine Desire and Colonialism in A Passage to India.' Somewhat challenging argument about inexpressibility as Forster’s way of contesting colonialism and sexual norms in the novel." RRB
This groundbreaking volume presents a radical revision of gay criticism and focuses on E. M. Forster's place in the emerging field of queer studies. Many previous critics of Forster downplayed his homosexuality or read Forster naively in terms of gay liberation. This collection situates Forster within the Bloomsbury Group and examines his relations to major figures such as Henry James, Edward Carpenter, and Virginia Woolf. Particular attention is paid to Forster's several accounts of India and their troubled relation to the British colonial enterprise. Analyzing a wide range of Forster's work, the authors examine material from Forster's undergraduate writings to stories written more than a half-century later. A landmark book for the study of gender in literature, Queer Forster brings the terms "queer" and "gay" into conversation, opening up a dialogue on wider dimensions of theory and allowing a major revaluation of modernist inventions of sexual identity.

This collection of essays, each one by a recognized expert, provides lively and innovative readings of every aspect of Forster's wide-ranging career. It includes substantial chapters dedicated to his two major novels, Howards End and A Passage to India, and further chapters focus on A Room With a View and Maurice. Forster's connections with the values of Bloomsbury and the lure of Greece and Italy in his work are assessed, as is his vexed relationship with Modernism. Other essays investigate his role as a literary critic, the status of his work within the genres of the novel and the short story, his treatment of sexuality and his attitude to and representation of women. This was the most comprehensive study of Forster's work to be published for many years, providing an invaluable source of comment on and insight into his writings.