Between Boys: Fantasy of Male Homosexuality in Boys' Love, Mary Renault, and Marguerite Yourcenar by Jui-An Chou Graduate Pr
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Between Boys: Fantasy of Male Homosexuality in Boys’ Love, Mary Renault, and Marguerite Yourcenar by Jui-an Chou Graduate Program in Literature Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Anne F. Garréta, Supervisor, Chair ___________________________ Robyn Wiegman, Co-Chair ___________________________ Rey Chow ___________________________ Anne Allison Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Literature in the Graduate School of Duke University 2018 ABSTRACT Between Boys: Fantasy of Male Homosexuality in Boys’ Love, Mary Renault, and Marguerite Yourcenar by Jui-an Chou Graduate Program in Literature Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Anne F. Garréta, Supervisor, Chair ___________________________ Robyn Wiegman, Co-Chair ___________________________ Rey Chow ___________________________ Anne Allison An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Literature in the Graduate School of Duke University 2018 Copyright by Jui-an Chou 2018 Abstract “Between Boys: Fantasy of Male Homosexuality in Boys’ Love, Mary Renault, and Marguerite Yourcenar” examines an unexpected kinship between Boys’ Love, a Japanese male-on-male romance genre, and literary works by Mary Renault and Marguerite Yourcenar, two mid-twentieth century authors who wrote about male homosexuality. Following Eve Sedgwick, who proposed that a “rich tradition of cross- gender inventions of homosexuality” should be studied separately from gay and lesbian literature, this dissertation examines male homoerotic fictions authored by women. These fictions foreground a disjunction between authorial and textual identities in gender and sexuality, and they have often been accused of inauthenticity, appropriation, and exploitation. This dissertation cuts through these critical impulses by suspending their attachment to identitarian thinking and a hierarchical understanding of political radicality in order to account for the seduction of fantasy in these texts. Exploring narrative strategies, critical receptions, textual and extra-textual relationalities produced by the three bodies of works, this dissertation delineates a paradigm for reading cross-gender homoerotic texts that is neither gay nor queer, neither paranoid nor reparative, and instead focuses on fantasy and how it produces pleasure. Fantasy is used in two senses here: as a preoccupation with relationships in romantic fantasies and as a desire to depart from the here and now. By thinking through iv both forms of fantasies, I examine the misalignments between identity and identifications in Boys’ Love, Renault’s historical novels about ancient Greece, and Yourcenar’s cross-identifications with gender, temporal, and cultural otherness. Close readings of not only the texts in question, but also discourses around them reveal erotic relationalities both within and outside of male homoerotic fantasies. The end of the dissertation reroutes my discussions back to Japan and debates about gay authenticity in order to foreground fantastical connections that would otherwise be overlooked in a reading that focuses more on identity than disidentifications, cross-identifications, and relationalities. v Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ........................................................................................................................ viii Introduction: Shameful Pleasures........................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Boys’ Love: The Fantasy of Male Homosexuality ............................................. 11 I. From Feminist Shelter to Queer Utopia: Reception History of Boys’ Love ............. 13 Feminist Readings of BL ............................................................................................... 20 Disidentifications ........................................................................................................... 31 Queer Readings of BL ................................................................................................... 35 II. Kizuna, Shipping, and the Erotic Triangle: The Case for Relationality .................. 47 Relationality Between Men ........................................................................................... 48 Relationality Between Women ..................................................................................... 53 III. Traffic in Male Bonding............................................................................................. 58 Chapter 2: From Greek Love to Boys’ Love: Mary Renault’s Romanticization of Pederasty ................................................................................................................................ 68 I. Lesbian Pioneer in Gay Literature: Renault’s Contested Reception History ........... 70 Historical Novel and Underground Gay Classic ........................................................ 71 Lesbian Novelist, Gay Novels ...................................................................................... 79 Queer Redemption?....................................................................................................... 83 II. Reading Renault Through Boys’ Love Fantasy ........................................................ 88 Renault’s Millennial Fans.............................................................................................. 89 Romance and Relationality ......................................................................................... 103 vi Tactics of Distantiation ................................................................................................ 106 Misogyny as an Escape Strategy ................................................................................ 108 III. The Persian Boy as a Boys’ Love Figure ................................................................. 119 Chapter 3: Marguerite Yourcenar’s Japanese Shoes: Cross-identification and the Pleasure of Misreading ....................................................................................................................... 127 I. Yourcenar’s Resistance to Identity Politics ............................................................... 129 II. Reading Yourcenar Through Fantasy...................................................................... 134 Yourcenar’s Cross-Identification ................................................................................ 135 Yourcenar’s Disidentification from the Self .............................................................. 140 Hadrian’s Cross-identifications .................................................................................. 145 III. Yourcenar’s Cross-identification with Japan ......................................................... 148 Mishima’s Distance and Proximity ............................................................................ 148 Resexualizing Mishima ............................................................................................... 154 Suga’s Cross-cultural Foot Fetish ............................................................................... 160 Hadrian and Manga, (Re)united ................................................................................ 174 Conclusion: Call Me by a Name That is Not Mine ............................................................ 180 References ............................................................................................................................. 190 Biography ............................................................................................................................. 198 vii List of Figures Figure 1: Rape scene from Kaze to ki no uta (1976-1984) ...................................................... 26 Figure 2: Kinniku BL [Muscle BL] (2016) .............................................................................. 29 Figure 3: Sex scene from Shimizu Yuki’s Kachō fūgetsu [Flowers, birds, wind, and the moon] (2014) ........................................................................................................................... 41 Figure 4: Front page of The Theban Band’s website ........................................................... 92 Figure 5: Fan art of The Charioteer by The Theban Band ..................................................... 93 Figure 6: Fan art of The Last of the Wine by The Theban Band ............................................ 99 Figure 7: Fan art of The Last of the Wine .............................................................................. 101 Figure 8: Marguerite Yourcenar as a child (1906).............................................................. 164 Figure 9: Marguerite Yourcenar in white shoes (1987) ..................................................... 166 Figure 10: Thermae Romae, vol. 1, p.76 ................................................................................ 175 Figure 11: Thermae Romae, vol. 2, p.87 ................................................................................ 176 Figure 12: Cover design of the Japanese translation of Call Me by Your Name ................ 187 viii Introduction: Shameful Pleasures When I was a sixteen-year-old exploring