Against Homophobic Traditionalism: The Revelations Of Writing Queer Historical Fiction

“I’m not against homosexuality,” nan Goodreads reappraisal stated. “But….”—and isn’t there’s ever a but pursuing specified a sentence?—”I [do not] want to publication a crippled of chiefly homosexual, aliases bisexual, aliases immoderate intersexual activities.” This reader’s takeaway? “The author”—who I should explain is me—”was overmuch much willing successful penning a homo-erotic [sic] communicative than an existent humanities fabrication novel.”

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When I publication this review, I knew it was latently, if not blatantly, homophobic. (I don’t deliberation a smattering of cheery intersexual encounters successful a three-hundred-and-sixty-eight-page book constitutes a crippled of “mainly” intersexual activities.)

But I recovered I couldn’t disregard this review, not fully. I knew I was erstwhile blameworthy of sharing immoderate of its perspective. For astir of my life, I excessively thought of humanities fabrication and queer fabrication arsenic inherently disparate spheres; I saw them arsenic oppositional modes of writing. Only done nan penning of my first novel—mutually queer and historical—did I study that I was wrong—that nan humanities caller is uniquely fertile ungraded for queer writers.

I grew up seeing humanities novels accumulate connected my parents’ white-painted bookshelves. There were nan wide hardcovers pinch U-boats and Spitfires that were my father’s Tom Clancy and Ken Follett novels. And then, sequestered to a different support were my mother’s humanities novels, ones that ever seemed to person girl in nan title: Girl pinch a Pearl Earring, The Other Boleyn Girl, Shanghai Girls.

I publication widely, hungrily passim my adolescence, but ne'er these. They were my parents’ novels, not mine. I saw nary avenue for my ain beingness successful their stories: not successful nan supposedly masculine bravado of combatant pitchy pilots nor successful nan quiet but ever alluring ladies-in-waiting. I saw only a binary, nan aforesaid binary I perceived everyplace I looked successful my childhood.

And yet, during my undergrad years, erstwhile I began penning my ain stories, they almost ever had a humanities setting. At nan time, I was embarrassed by this. I still held onto a conception that humanities fabrication was successful immoderate measurement dusty and traditionalist. I felt arsenic if I were penning not arsenic my twenty-something cheery self, but alternatively play-writing arsenic an older, consecutive type of myself.

In my early, reluctant humanities fabrication efforts, I still preserved nan bound betwixt nan humanities and nan queer. I was woefully anxious astir anachronisms, truthful I told myself inserting immoderate benignant of queerness would beryllium false, reminding myself that nan word “homosexual” wasn’t coined until nan nineteenth century, that our existent ideologies astir sexuality manifested themselves otherwise successful past eras, and truthful on.

I decided that if I was going to constitute successful nan humanities genre, I was going to do truthful for illustration Hilary Mantel: I was going to possibly connection caller perspectives but still yet adhere to nan irrefutable facts of nan humanities record.

Then nan humanities grounds analyzable my efforts. I wanted to constitute a caller astir nan early, troubled profession of Leonardo da Vinci, thing successful which I could comprehend nan lines betwixt creation and commerce. So erstwhile I learned successful my investigation that Leonardo was accused doubly during his twenties of engaging successful sodomy pinch a antheral activity worker, I was surprised, confounded, and yet inspired.

I wondered why this truth was kept retired of my schoolroom studies of Leonardo, and I began considering if these accusations mightiness supply a imaginable mentation arsenic to nan different questions I held astir his early career. I had recovered nan fulcrum of my story, recovered what Mantel erstwhile described arsenic “the constituent erstwhile nan satisfactions of nan charismatic communicative break down.”

Still, I was skittish. By focusing connected Leonardo’s individual life, by placing accent connected a intersexual life wrong a historical context—I worried I was misappropriating nan humanities genre. I sought support from scholars to render Leonardo this way, moreover erstwhile these aforesaid scholars chose not to remark connected nan aforesaid grounds which I could not ignore.

Eventually—and not without nan thief of therapy—I realized it was nan seeking of this support that was nan inherent problem. To obsess complete really to explanation aliases accurately picture Leonardo’s sexuality was missing nan point. If I believed he held attraction to different men, past my activity arsenic a fabrication writer was to consider, to ideate what that attraction mightiness person felt like, to him, successful nan Florence of his youth.

I was miring myself successful a fatuous world statement astir labels and anachronisms, when, arsenic a novelist, they weren’t my superior concern. My interest, my realm was—and should beryllium for each humanities novelists, I’d argue—the personal: desires, anxieties, inspiration. Everything internal.

This isn’t to opportunity I wanted to disregard nan diligent activity of historians and nan extant humanities record. I still wanted to support a Mantel-esque humanities fidelity, and I could: I had gone to Florence and held successful my hands nan fifteenth-century ledger that named Leonardo arsenic a sodomite. Heavy and yellowed and smelling of must, that was history to me.

And its use, for my efforts, was different from that of a historian. A historiographer could look astatine that ledger and see really galore accusations were false, could comparison arrests against accusations, could situate this successful a taste discourse against different European cities during nan Renaissance.

As a novelist, however, I had different group of devices done which I could see this ledger, could see nan past. I could ideate what it mightiness person felt for illustration to find oneself accused. How 1 mightiness interest astir their begetter proceeding specified news. How a fearfulness of activity mightiness manifest itself successful a painter’s brushstrokes.

This is simply a imaginable of nan humanities genre for queer fiction: to render a queer beingness which has been omitted, neglected, aliases has simply grounded to beryllium considered by our existing histories. My teen self—and that Goodreads reviewer—thought “actual” humanities fabrication was a wholly different mode from humanities fiction.

But I’d reason that is really nan historiographical process of penning effective humanities fiction, nan method of bringing into mobility nan sometimes slanted but almost ever precarious constructs of history themselves, that is an perfect lucifer for penning queerly.

Might a queer attack to humanities fabrication inquire caller questions and connection caller perspectives? Provide a needed provocation? It could beryllium a manifestation of what Judith Butler was articulating erstwhile they described queer arsenic “a tract of corporate contestation, nan constituent of departure for a group of humanities reflections and early imaginings.”

To these efforts, queer humanities fabrication offers an unexpected remedy: it holds nan imaginable to create, preserve, and challenge—all astatine once.[/pullquote]

This is not an workout to solely play pinch nan past. With nan Trump-era National Park Service removed immoderate mention of transgender group from its webpage for nan Stonewall National Monument, we are base witnesser to nan real-time erasure of queer history.

To these efforts, queer humanities fabrication offers an unexpected remedy: it holds nan imaginable to create, preserve, and challenge—all astatine once. In this form, I deliberation it’s a existent embodiment of nan verb queer—not its once-derogatory meaning, but its original usage, making love backmost to nan fourteenth century: “to ask, inquire.”

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Florenzer by Phil Melanson is disposable via Liveright.