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Cartooning queers from the Georgian dandies to Oscar Wilde

Dominic Janes (Keele University) – Cartooning queers from the Georgian dandies to Oscar WildeExeter publicity
This will be a lecture and discussion of a series of cartoons of effeminates and queer characters from the eighteenth to the late nineteenth century. The aim is explore the degree to which Oscar Wilde was the first camp ‘proto-gay man’ or whether we have lost touch with a prior history of dandified display that he simply inherited and deployed. The material is derived from collections of prints, and illustrations of periodicals. This would be presented in a highly accessible fashion in which the audience would be asked to participate in whether they though the images in question indicate not merely effeminacy but also same-sex desire. The more formal book project (published November 2016) from which this is derived is Oscar Wilde Prefigured: Queer Fashioning and British Caricature, 1750–1900, Chicago University Press.
Dominic James appears at OUTing the Past – Exeter on 12th February 2017