The Lingering Clasp of the Hand
Subtitle: The Aesthetics of Imperial Fiction
Publisher: University of Hull Library
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Hull
Format: Literary Criticism
Number of pages: 265
Table of contents: title: The aim of the book is to define the nature of literary collaboration by authors in the mediation and production of the novel of masculine action in the period 1885-1905.  Collaboration in texts is a very interesting problematic that becomes more marked in the late-Victorian period.  I have analysed the nature and motivation on which various literary collaborations rested, looking at the issue of sexuality within the discourse and at the disputes that arose and the rivalries that existed within the male bonded community.; title: Literary collaboration represented an elevated form of energy that may have arisen from unclear motives; and it is the nature of that energy that I attempt to understand in this book.  Some of the sources I have used for this study have been Double Talk by Wayne Koestenbaum, and both Epistemology of the Closet and Tendencies by Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick.  I have also been significantly influenced in this project by Stephen Heath’s “Psychopathia Sexualis”, by William A. Cohen’s Sex Secrets, and The Poetics of Gender by Nancy K. Miller.  Their work on literary collaboration has been influential in forwarding scholarship on queer theory, not least by allowing for new ways of looking at masculinities and femininities and ways in which these masculinities and femininities altered during the course of the late-Victorian period.; title: I have approached my work in three ways, looking at three essential themes — literary collaboration, Empire and sex.  Firstly, I examine literary collaboration in many of its manifestations.  There exist some key texts including Haggard’s She, King Solomon’s Mines and The World’s Desire arising from the collaboration of authors, between whom some objections arose.  I also demonstrate an interest in the nature of collaboration and male bonding within the discourse that I examine.  And secondly, I analyse the impact of Empire because it was a quintessential movement that is reflected in the novels of masculine adventure.  Empire, I will argue, provided the geographical scope and possibility for adventure and romance and the many theories about its inception, progress and decline are briefly touched on.  I particularly challenge the notion that Empire was a benign institution, as has been suggested arrogantly and quite unsoundly by some recent right-wing commentators.  Lastly, I highlight sex because there are a number of texts that deal with the matter in particularly interesting hidden, unconscious ways that are suggestive and erotic and often point to the homosexuality of the writers.  I will make a close examination of texts to show where the hidden patterns of eroticism and queer fiction lie.  These texts include She, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the joint work by R. L. Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne, The Ebb Tide.