By Alicia Ortiz Alba
For our last post of this school year’s English Colloquium, Literary Challengers vs The Literary Canon, we are delighted to introduce Parker L. Schwartz’s statement from their senior thesis. We hope you enjoy it!
“Some Other Where”: Amy Levy’s Poetics of a Radical Queer Identity
As a queer woman in Victorian England, Amy Levy (1861-1889) exhibits both a desire to express her queer identity and an understanding that she is unable to articulate this identity freely in a culture that expects heteronormativity. Reclaiming this identity is important for both literary scholars and everyday readers because it demonstrates that these identities are not new and highlights the persistent and historical struggle to represent the full spectrum of gender and sexual identities. This paper focuses on Levy’s use of setting, implied context, ambiguous pronouns, and her play on heterosexual expectations to determine a strong queer voice.