The Other Orpheus: A Poetics of Modern Homosexuality

Since the troubadours, Western Poetry has rarely spoken of love, desire, and pleasure without invoking the specter of death. Western discourse also marries representations of homoeroticism to catastrophe; an entire modern narrative subgenre, for instance, plots the untimely demise of a wayward homosexual protagonist, a narrative sometimes resuscitated in media discourse on AIDS. Merrill Cole argues that death, whether through complications resulting from a compromised immune system, or as a result of gaybashing, provides narrative satisfaction. This book posits that male homoeroticism is a crucial component of any comprehensive understanding of modernism and the crisis of modern masculinity.