Uranian Autobiography: Newman’s Rondeaux of Boyhood and Reid’s Apostate
Uranian Autobiography: Newman’s Rondeaux of Boyhood and Reid’s Apostate

Author(s): Michael Matthew Kaylor
Subject(s): Theory of Literature, British Literature
Published by: Masarykova univerzita nakladatelství
Keywords: Biography; autobiographical writing; Uranian autobiography; English literature; Uranian writers;
Summary/Abstract: The core concern of all autobiographical writing is the elucidation of the following diptych: Who I am and Who I have been. A plethora of issues arise from this, involving credibility, authenticity, available evidence, point of view, authorial intention, gaps in memory, social standing, interpersonal relationships, sexuality, to name but a few. These issues are problematized even further when a writer cannot, for whatever reason, safely admit either Who I am or Who I have been. Such was the case for the pederastic writers and artists of the Victorian and Edwardian periods, a cluster of diverse voices that have been decently subsumed under the title “Uranian.” Having illustrated at some length in my Secreted Desires: The Major Uranians: Hopkins, Pater and Wilde (2006) and in the introduction to my Lad’s Love: An Anthology of Uranian Poetry and Prose (2010) that, for the Uranian writers and artists, Lord Alfred Douglas’s (in)famous phrase “the Love that dare not speak its name” was largely a social and cultural reality, I will not, at present, belabour the point.

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