"Literature has always been concerned with questions of kinship, love, marriage, desire, family relationships. The central and privileged stories have tended to assume that desire will be desire between girl and boy. Obstacles are thrown in the way of desire. In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1597), the heroine and hero cannot marry because their families, the Montagues and the Capulets, are feuding. The obstacles which stand in the way of same-sex romantic entanglements have been much more encompassing. Before the twentieth century, they have, for the most part, been represented as an impossibility rather than a desirable outcome thwarted by circumstance"-- Provided by publisher.

Hugh Stevens --Joseph Bristow -- Andrew Webber -- Joanne Winning -- Tim Dean -- Hugh Stevens -- Ruth Vanita -- Kathryn Bond Stockton -- Richard Canning -- Heather Love -- Jodie Medd -- Jane Garrity and Tirza True Latimer -- Richard R. Bozorth -- David Bergman. -- Homosexuality and literature : -- an introduction / -- Homosexual writing on trial : -- from Fanny Hill to Gay news / -- Psychoanalysis, homosexuality and modernism / -- Lesbian modernism : -- writing in and beyond the closet / -- The erotics of transgression / -- Normality and queerness in gay fiction / -- The homoerotics of travel : -- people, ideas, genres / -- The queerness of race and same-sex desire / -- The literature of AIDS / -- Transgender fiction and politics / -- Encountering the past in recent lesbian and gay fiction / -- Queer cross-gender collaboration / -- Naming the unnamable : -- lesbian and gay love poetry / -- The queer writer in New York / Homosexuality and literature: an introduction / Hugh Stevens -- Homosexual writing on trial: from Fanny Hill to Gay News / Joseph Bristow -- Psychoanalysis, homosexuality and modernism / Andrew Webber -- Lesbian modernism: writing in and beyond the closet8Joanne Winning -- The erotics of transgression / Tim Dean -- Normality and queerness in gay fiction / Hugh Stevens -- The homoerotics of travel: people, ideas, genres / Ruth Vanita -- The queerness of race and same-sex desire / Kathryn Bond Stockton -- The literature of AIDS / Richard Canning -- Transgender fiction and politics / Heather Love -- Encountering the past in recent lesbian and gay fiction / Jodie Medd -- Queer cross-gender collaboration / Jane Garrity and Tirza True Latimer -- Naming the unnameable: lesbian and gay love poetry / Richard R. Bozorth -- The queer writer in New York / David Bergman.