University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations May 2016 Queer Literary Criticism and the Biographical Fallacy Shawna Lipton University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, and the Gender and Sexuality Commons Recommended Citation Lipton, Shawna, "Queer Literary Criticism and the Biographical Fallacy" (2016). Theses and Dissertations. 1171. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/1171 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. QUEER LITERARY CRITICISM AND THE BIOGRAPHICAL FALLACY by Shawna Lipton A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee May 2016 ABSTRACT QUEER LITERARY CRITICISM AND THE BIOGRAPHICAL FALLACY by Shawna Lipton The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2016 Under the Supervision of Professor Jane Gallop “Queer Literary Criticism and the Biographical Fallacy” engages with three fields of inquiry within literary studies: queer literary criticism, modernist studies, and author theory. By looking at the critical reception of four iconic queer modernist authors – Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Radclyffe Hall, and Virginia Woolf– this dissertation reinvestigates the relation between criticism and the figure of the author. Queer criticism-- despite its fundamental critique of identity—relies on the identity of the author when it blurs the distinction between the literary text and the author’s biography.