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Loyola University Chicago

The Queer Work of Fantasy: The Romance in Antebellum America

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

<p>This project examines the ways in which antebellum writers of romances theorized the relationship between fantasy and queer desire. These writers produced vision of alternative forms of sociality that serve to criticize the heteronormativity of antebellum sexual culture and to promote fantasy as both a mode of critique and a strategy for cultural subversion. Antebellum romances thus represent both a deep dissatisfaction with their author's contemporary culture and a means of envisioning subversive socialities and intimacies that promote freedom of the expression of desire and allow for the queerness that might characterize such expressions if subjects were able to speak "the truth of the human heart," to use Hawthorne's phrase, without fear of censure.</p>

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Level thesis:degree_level
Dissertation
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
English
Year dc:date.available
2009

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Lamm, Zachary Neil

Subjects

dc:subject × 7

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Repository record dc:identifier
https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/172
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:ecommons.luc.edu:luc_diss-1171

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Loyola University Chicago
Base URL
ecommons.luc.edu/do/oai/
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Lamm, Zachary Neil. The Queer Work of Fantasy: The Romance in Antebellum America. Dissertation thesis, 2009. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/172