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EXQUISITE AMATEURS: QUEER DILETTANTISM and VICTORIAN AESTHETICS by BENJAMIN HUDSON (Under the Direction of Tricia Lootens) ABSTR

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EXQUISITE AMATEURS: QUEER DILETTANTISM and VICTORIAN AESTHETICS by BENJAMIN HUDSON (Under the Direction of Tricia Lootens) ABSTR EXQUISITE AMATEURS: QUEER DILETTANTISM AND VICTORIAN AESTHETICS by BENJAMIN HUDSON (Under the Direction of Tricia Lootens) ABSTRACT This dissertation considers how a discourse of queer dilettantism developed in England over the second half of the nineteenth-century. Scholars of sexuality and gender have examined this period for its vibrant and shifting discourses of gender; however, they have overlooked the importance of amateurism to this discourse. This is most surprising because dilettantism is enshrined in Pater’s Preface, a text deeply involved in critical evaluations of masculinity in the 1870s, with a quote from Saint-Beuve that upholds “exquis amateurs” as a new ideal. Dilettantism, moreover, not only offers a rubric for understanding a fledgling discourse of sexual identity but also suggests how an appreciation of art was historically constructed as an essential aspect of it. With focused readings of central texts the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, The Renaissance, “The Critic as Artist,” and The Portrait of Mr. W.H., Exquisite Amateurs describes how these works propound an ethos of amateurism to unsteady both the orthodoxies of religion and the growing standards of professionalism, while carving a space to explore new sexual possibility. Finally, it recuperates amateurism as a valid intellectual project that has room to maneuver felicitously through the disciplines and identifies a new figure for historical inquiry— the “dilettante faggot”—who both troubles and supports constructivist accounts of homosexuality. INDEX WORDS: Amateur, Amateurism, Dilettante, Dilettantism, Sexuality, Homosexuality, Masculinity, Gender, Queer, England, Fin-de-siècle, Aestheticism, Nineteenth Century, Victorian, Poetry, Novel, Criticism, Edward FitzGerald, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, The Renaissance, The Portrait of Mr. W.H. EXQUISITE AMATEURS: QUEER DILETTANTISM AND VICTORIAN AESTHETICS by BENJAMIN HUDSON B.A., New York University, 2004 M.A., New York University, 2005 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2016 © 2016 Benjamin T Hudson All Rights Reserved EXQUISITE AMATEURS: QUEER DILETTANTISM AND VICTORIAN AESTHETICS by BENJAMIN HUDSON Major Professor: Tricia Lootens Committee: Roxanne Eberle Richard Menke Electronic Version Approved: Suzanne Barbour Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia August 2016 iv DEDICATION For my mother, who taught me how to love art, and for my father, who taught me how to love language. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have been profoundly lucky to study under some of the most gifted and intellectually generous minds in my field. This project would have never taken shape without the tutelage and guidance of my committee and especially Dr. Tricia Lootens. It’s difficult to put into words how grateful I am to the committee’s encouragement and advocacy for this project. In my mind, this dissertation is of course a final project for my degree but also an early draft of a manuscript that is yet to be written, and it is so much better because I knew that I was writing for such discriminating readers. Dr. Lootens in particular has been so generous with her time and her criticism of my work that I know I have earned a debt that I will never be able to repay. From graciously receiving my panicked, last-minute requests for meetings, to helping me work out theoretical problems and contradictions (or, rather, to helping me understand how to embrace them), to offering me suggestions on how I might salvage my third chapter from the point of no return, and to demonstrating to me that this was a project worth pursuing through her incisive appraisals of each draft, Dr. Lootens has modeled for me how to be a better teacher and scholar, while preserving, in her critique and her conversation, a spirit of enthusiasm for scholarship that resonates, for me, with the most attractive aspects of the amateur hermeneutics that I try to define herein. Dr. Lootens, I truly cannot thank you enough. I have one very great regret of my time in graduate school. It is still painful to me that I was out of the country during the semester that Dr. Eberle and Dr. Menke offered their Austen and Dickens seminars. I came to graduate school for those seminars, and it was a sick twist of fate that I was in England while they were offered. Because I have had the pleasure of taking vi some of their other courses, the pain is especially acute. Perhaps it’s appropriate that I’ll remain an Austen and Dickens amateur without the benefit of the manifold intellectual delights that those courses and conversations undoubtedly offered. Both Dr. Menke and Dr. Eberle have shepherded this project immeasurably. Over the past several months, after receiving my Pater and Wilde chapters, Dr. Menke and I have had an indispensable electronic discussion about amateurism and Victorian professionalism. Dr. Menke helped me refine my ideas about what the authors I examine have accomplished and pushed me to refine my methodological approach and to cement my ideological foundation, and this project would not have been possible without that exchange. Dr. Eberle’s notes on my FitzGerald chapter helped me to refine my close readings and prepare a manuscript that Victorian Poetry will be publishing in July 2016. Because she shaped the way I went about my close readings in subsequent drafts and piloted my first chapter into an acceptance from a scholarly journal, her guidance has been crucial. Thank you both. I could not have dreamed a more supportive and insightful committee, and, if this dissertation succeeds, it does so because I knew I was writing for all of you. The rest of the faculty at UGA have also been incredibly supportive, and my experiences with them have helped me understand the kind of scholar I want to be. Thanks, especially, to Dr. Chloe Wigston Smith for forming me into a better writer, to Dr. Beth Tobin for generously agreeing to direct a reading course in Victorian economics and literature, and to Dr. Ed Pavlić for always being willing to engage me about my ideas. Dr. Christy Desmet and Dr. Deborah Miller have guided me in my teaching and together built a scaffold upon which my pedagogy has matured. Thank you all. vii My graduate student colleagues have also created an invaluable network of support and offered their own trenchant critiques of my work. Thank you to Megan, Henna, Holly, Joshua, Ben, Emily, Nick, Daniel, Jeff, Jennifer, Julia, Alyssa, Courtney and everyone else, for talking through our work together and grabbing a drink or watching a shitty television show when we needed to forget the world it felt like we were carrying on our backs. You all are rad and brilliant, and I’m so happy we went through this process together. It’s bittersweet to finish this project without having read the example of Caroline Daniel Ramsey’s completed work. Caroline was a great friend, an insatiable reader, and a fine young scholar. One of my favorite memories of Caroline takes place on the night of the closing of the 283 Bar, a bacchanalia not soon forgotten among many others like it in downtown Athens. Dan had been working intermittently at sea, and we were both ready for him to take a more permanent place in Athens. We had barely gotten this out of our mouths, when Caroline bellowed over the raucous din, “Chuck, give Daniel a job!” And it was pretty much done. Caroline was a great mentor to me as I started my coursework and a really wonderful friend: dinners at her house were occasions to remember not only for their manifold gustatory pleasures but more importantly for the delight of engaging a sharp-witted mind as it led a swiftly moving conversation, and I’ll always miss talking over and learning about Victorian letters and women’s writing with her. We miss you so much, C. Finally, thanks to Daniel, Bounce, and Poakchop for letting me work or working with me, distracting me when I needed distraction, and always sharing with me with your love and support. I love you too. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................................v LIST OF FIGURES .........................................................................................................................x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: ‘AMATEURS OF IMPERFECT DEVELOPMENT’ ...................1 The Queer Dilettante and the Fin de Siècle .............................................................1 Amateurism and Professionalism in the Nineteenth Century ................................16 ‘Lodgers in Queer Street’: Victorian Dilettantism and Queer Theory ..................29 2 ‘DILETTANTE FAGGOTS’: FITZGERALD, THE RUBÁIYÁT, AND QUEER AMATEURISM ...........................................................................................................35 The Amateur Rubáiyát ...........................................................................................35 ‘Gossamer Association’: The Rubáiyát and Amateur Poetics ...............................49 Dilettante Faggots ..................................................................................................62 3 ‘EXQUIS AMATEURS’: THE RENAISSANCE AND THE PROFESSION OF DILETTANTISM ........................................................................................................74 ‘Exquis Amateurs’ .................................................................................................74
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