If you haven't, you should read Eve Sedgwick's "Between Men", which is about how affection/denial of affection between men is core to patriarchy (and to gothic novels.) Also her book Epistemology of the Closet; in both she dissects the default assumption that people in the past were unaware of same sex erotic possibilities, or that they *of course* wouldn't include those in their works. (You may well have read these! If not I think you'd really love them; she's amazing.)
Also worth thinking about the fact that Tolkien was pretty consciously writing Sam/Frodo as an analog for officer/soldier relationships in WWI—and many of the best known WWI poets/memoirists in England were gay and at least fairly well known to be gay even at the time. I'm not sure if Tolkien was influenced by Siegfried Sassoon/Wilfred Owen/Robert Graves, but...it doesn't seem out of the question that he might have been. He had to have been aware of them at least.
This was good. I didn't realize Jackson toned down the intimacy for the LotR films, if anything you'd think it would be the other way around.
I also like the challenge of not imposing queerness retroactively into older texts, although in some cases, such as the ones you pointed out, it's perhaps more unfair to try and keep a queer reading out of it. The Lewis one is especially interesting, considering the second novel was (iirc) revisiting the Adam/Eve narrative, so noticing the appearance of sexuality/sensuality into a formerly sterile world is maybe a tell. Not one Lewis intended, but a tell nonetheless.
C.S. Lewis also has another interesting passage on this topic in "Surprised by Joy":
"If those of us who have known a school like Wyvern dared to speak the truth, we should have to say that pederasty, however great an evil in itself, was, in that time and place, the only foothold or cranny left for certain good things. It was the only counterpoise to the social struggle; the one oasis (though green only with weeds and moist only with fetid water) in the burning desert of competitive ambition. In his unnatural love affairs, and perhaps only there, the Blood went a little out of himself, forgot for a few hours that he was One of the Most Important People There Are. It softens the picture. A perversion was the only chink left through which something spontaneous and uncalculating could creep in. Plato was right after all. Eros, turned upside down, blackened, distorted, and filthy, still bore the traces of his divinity."
If you haven't, you should read Eve Sedgwick's "Between Men", which is about how affection/denial of affection between men is core to patriarchy (and to gothic novels.) Also her book Epistemology of the Closet; in both she dissects the default assumption that people in the past were unaware of same sex erotic possibilities, or that they *of course* wouldn't include those in their works. (You may well have read these! If not I think you'd really love them; she's amazing.)
Also worth thinking about the fact that Tolkien was pretty consciously writing Sam/Frodo as an analog for officer/soldier relationships in WWI—and many of the best known WWI poets/memoirists in England were gay and at least fairly well known to be gay even at the time. I'm not sure if Tolkien was influenced by Siegfried Sassoon/Wilfred Owen/Robert Graves, but...it doesn't seem out of the question that he might have been. He had to have been aware of them at least.
This was good. I didn't realize Jackson toned down the intimacy for the LotR films, if anything you'd think it would be the other way around.
I also like the challenge of not imposing queerness retroactively into older texts, although in some cases, such as the ones you pointed out, it's perhaps more unfair to try and keep a queer reading out of it. The Lewis one is especially interesting, considering the second novel was (iirc) revisiting the Adam/Eve narrative, so noticing the appearance of sexuality/sensuality into a formerly sterile world is maybe a tell. Not one Lewis intended, but a tell nonetheless.
C.S. Lewis also has another interesting passage on this topic in "Surprised by Joy":
"If those of us who have known a school like Wyvern dared to speak the truth, we should have to say that pederasty, however great an evil in itself, was, in that time and place, the only foothold or cranny left for certain good things. It was the only counterpoise to the social struggle; the one oasis (though green only with weeds and moist only with fetid water) in the burning desert of competitive ambition. In his unnatural love affairs, and perhaps only there, the Blood went a little out of himself, forgot for a few hours that he was One of the Most Important People There Are. It softens the picture. A perversion was the only chink left through which something spontaneous and uncalculating could creep in. Plato was right after all. Eros, turned upside down, blackened, distorted, and filthy, still bore the traces of his divinity."