Queer literary interpretation is a method of literary interpretation stemming from Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis and the gay rights movement. It is an addition to literary theory in the 1980s.
Only partially based on gay, lesbian and bisexual issues, a queer literary interpretation is largely concerned with sexual identity, especially "closeted" (hidden) sexual identity. Other "closeted" aspects of works are often examined, as well.
There are opposing views of queer literary theory. One view is that sexual identity is "fixed", and may be discerned by careful study. The opposing view is that sexual identity is both fluid and socially constructed, and thus there is no "absolute" identity.
Questions that a queer literary interpretation might attempt to answer:
- What does the work tell the reader about the author's sexual identity?
- Conversely, how might the author's sexual identity affect different aspects of work?
- What doesn't the author tell the reader about the sexual identities of his or her characters? How this omission significant?
- What aspects of the work has the author silenced or closeted, in order to gain the approval of society?
A traditional work of literature can be "queered" by applying this type of interpretation.
Famous quotes containing the words queer and/or literary:
“We must be generously willing to leave for a time the narrow boundaries in which our individual lives are passed ... In this fresh, breezy atmosphere ... we will be surprised to find that many of our familiar old conventional truths look very queer indeed in some of the sudden side lights thrown upon them.”
—Bertha Honore Potter Palmer (1849–1918)
“Poetry seems to have been eliminated as a literary genre, and installed instead, as a kind of spiritual aerobic exercise—nobody need read it, but anybody can do it.”
—Marilyn Hacker (b. 1942)