But Suppose I Did Want a Boy?” Homosexual Economies in Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8894748 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robert K Martins (0000-0003-1275-1795, corresponding author), Robert K Martin (corresponding author), Leland S Person |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 101-124 |
| Publication date | 2015-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Canadian Review of American Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-7720 • E-ISSN: 1710-114X |
| Publisher | University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.3138/cras.2015.s06 |
| OpenAlex | W2048990340 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 18 |
This article is centred on chapter twenty-two of The Confidence-Man, the chapter in which the con man, in the guise of Philosophical Intelligence Officer, tries to sell a boy to Pitch, the misanthropic Missouri bachelor who has used up some thirty boys on his backwoods farm and now wants to replace boys with machines. Structured as an epistolary dialogue between the two authors, the article explores the complex ways Melville’s novel positions its readers and the desires they bring to the text. Can the long debate in chapter twenty-two about buying boys be read as a transaction between a pimp and a pederast? Do other homosocial encounters in the novel encode homosexuality and thus reinforce our perception of it in chapter twenty-two? The authors argue for a queer reading of The Confidence-Man and in the process foreground their own sexual identities and reading practices
Art · Bachelor · Database transaction · Epistemology · Homosexuality · Linguistics · Literature · Officer · Perception · Queer · Reading (process · Sociology · American and British Literature Analysis · American Sports and Literature · Computer Science · Gender Studies · History · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Philosophy
Hidden from History
Confidence Men and Painted Women
Gay New York
Subversive Genealogy
Disorderly conduct
The Writings of Herman Melville: The Northwestern-Newberry Edition, Vol. 10: The Confidence-Man: His MasqueradeHis Masquerade
Between Men
This Sex Which is Not One
Men in Feminism
Hero, Captain, and Stranger
Subversive Genealogy
Beneath the American Renaissance
Closet Writing/Gay Reading
Melville's Confidence Men and American Politics in the 1850s
Inverts, Perverts, and Mary-Annes
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |