Warm Brothers: Queer Theory and the Age of Goethe

The seminal study of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German literature from the perspective of queer theory, “Warm Brothers” searches out the traces of male-male desire in the cultural productions of the Age of Goethe, offering queer readings of texts written before a modern vocabulary of sexuality existed. The book provides an historical overview of same-sex (especially male-male) sexual behavior in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It pays special attention to the connections between depictions of same-sex desire and orientalism. At times, it moves into a deconstructive mode. Authors central to the project include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Karl Philipp Moritz, Christoph Martin Wieland, Jean Paul, and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. In addition to providing close readings of these important authors, this book hopes to provide a model for all those who seek to study sexuality in literatures written prior to modern discourses of sexuality.

Warm Brothers: Queer Theory and the Age of Goethe.  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. A Choice “Outstanding Title.”

Reviews: German Studies Review 24.2 [May 2001], 385-86; European Romantic Review 12.3 [Summer 2001], 402-5; Journal of the History of Sexuality 10.3/4 [July/October 2001] 594-97; International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies 6.3 [2001], 225-29; Lessing Yearbook  33 [2001] 393-95; Invertitio 2001; Colloquia Germanica 34.3/4 [2001], 339-40;  Zeitschrift für Germanistik 12.2 [2002] 382-84;  Freiburger literaturpsychologische Gespräche. Jahrbuch für Literatur und Psychoanalyse, 21 [2002] 296-98; Monatshefte 94.3 [2002] 398-99; ASECS Book Reviews Online); Eighteenth-Century Studies 36.3 [Spring 2003] 455-60.