Queer Culture and Literature in Eighteenth-Century Studies

Dear Colleagues,

QUEER. adj. [of this word the original is not known: correspondent supposes a queer man to be one has a quære to his name in a list.] Odd; strange; original; particular. He never went to bed until two in the morning, because he would not be a queer fellow; and was every now and then knocked down by a constable, to signalize his vivacity. Spect.

QUEE’rly. Adv. [from queer] Particularly; oddly.

QUEE’RNESS. n.f [from queer] Oddness; particularity.[1]

In his Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Samuel Johnson defines ‘queer’ as ‘Odd; strange; original; particular’. The literary example used to illustrate Johnson’s definition of ‘queerness’ comes from Addison’s and Steele’s The Spectator, and curiously involves the story of ‘a fellow’ who would not go to ‘bed until two in the morning’ so as to avoid being labelled ‘a queer’. This ‘non-queer’ man also encounters the constabulary only to be ‘knocked down’. The de-contextualised narrative components within Johnson’s chosen literary example tantalizingly enfold the potential intimacy or sexuality of the ‘bed’ with the rough enforcement of the ‘constable’ and the gendered performance of ‘vivacity’. Reading, perhaps, anachronistically, there is much in Johnson’s description to tease a resonance with twenty-first century queer experiences of intimacy, sex, criminalisation, and performance.

To a queer-studies reader of the anglophone eighteenth-century, Johnson’s attempt to define ‘queer’ is also, ironically, a very ‘un-queer’ exercise. Of course, the gulf between our own shifting and unstable understanding of queer and Johnson’s entry is deep and intellectually treacherous. And, yet, as scholars have persuasively shown over the past few decades, the long eighteenth century is an incredibly queer period.

This Special Issue invites articles that explore the queer eighteenth century, with a particular emphasis placed on the following areas:

• Trans and non-binary eighteenth-century lives and cultures.
• (Dis)ability and eighteenth-century queerness.
• Queerness and Indigenous lives and cultures in the eighteenth century.
• Material culture and queerness.
• Queerness and 21^st-century representations of the eighteenth century.
• Queer historiography and the eighteenth century.
• Race and queerness in eighteenth-century literature and culture.
• Queer domesticities, places, and landmarks.
• Queer communities and networks.

[1] Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language: In Which The Words are deduced from their Originals, And Illustrated in their Different Significations By Examples from the best Writers. To Which Are Prefixed, A History of the Language, And An English Grammar. By Samuel Johnson, A.M. In Two Volumes. Vol. II. (London: W. Strahan, For J. and P. Knapton; T. and T. Longman; C. Hitch and L. Hawes; A. Millar; and R. and J. Dodsley., 1755)  

Dr. Declan Kavanagh
Guest Editor

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• queerness
• trans
• non-binary
• Indigenous
• material culture
• history
• race
• domesticity
• literary networks