“Áh yoù sílly àss, góds lìve in woóds!” Queer appropriations of Edwardian Classicism in Forster’s short fiction and Maurice

Abstract

This paper examines the interplay between classical tropes and queer identities in selected examples from Forster, in particular how his appropriation and interpretation of the scholarly classicism typical of his upbringing represents a point of divergence from the Wildean, Philhellenist hinterground of the previous century. The spectral schoolmaster figure, represented by e.g. Mr Bons in The Celestial Omnibus is often unseated – his tenure is over and he can no longer dictate the terms of classical engagement – but this paper argues that Forster goes further in his reappropriation of the classical ideal. Whilst the late nineteenth-century’s queer, classicised aestheticism may be understood as grounded in the urban elite – extrapolated into the twentieth by the Platonism of the Cambridge Apostles (see: Clive in Maurice) – Forster’s understanding of queer classicism is a more universalised quality and one evident anywhere in the natural world, should one wish to look. The figure of Pan is of particular relevance here, investigating Forster’s engagement with a mythological figure so in vogue during this period.

Keywords

• e.m. forster
• classical reception
• maurice
• queer studies
• english literature