'The Embrace of Love: Being Gay in Ireland Now'

Same-Sex Relationships in English Literature
Research in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin
“In the emerging genre of
detective fiction in the late-
nineteenth century, both the
male hero detective and his
master criminal counterpart alike
eschewed female company and
formed intense relationships with
other men in ways that can be
interpreted as providing a
challenge to the dominant codes
of masculinity of the time.”
Dr Ailise Bulfin is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the
School of English

“Shakespeare addresses the
marriage of true minds in many
kinds across the canon. In a
number of works in particular
(A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
Romeo and Juliet, the Sonnets,
The Merchant of Venice,
Coriolanus, Two Noble Kinsmen)
the comfort and despair of
same- sex love informs and
implicates all other
relationships.”
Dr Amanda Piesse is an Associate Professor at the School of English, and teaches
an option on love, duty and family in early modern literature

Dr Brian Cliff is an Associate Professor at the School of English, where he
teaches contemporary Irish literature and Irish Studies
“Emma Donoghue was
hardly the first to write
about queer Irishwomen,
but her fiction broke new
ground in representing fully
their inner lives. In Hood, she
writes movingly about a
woman struggling with her
partner's death while having
to remain in the closet as a
widow.”

“Kari (2008) is a graphic novel
by Indian writer and artist
Amruta Patil which explores
Kari’s feelings of being caught
between worlds following the
end of her relationship with
Ruth. The opening scene
depicts the painful ending of
this relationship: ‘There are two
of us, not one. Despite a
slipshod surgical procedure, we
are joined still’.”
Dr Ciara Gallagher is a postdoctoral researcher on the National Collection of
Children’s Books project

You are cordially invited to a
public talk by
COLM TÓIBÍN
The Embrace of Love:
Being Gay in Ireland Now
to be followed by discussion with
panellists from the School of
English TCD and UCD
Supported by
Trinity Long Room Hub
('Behind the Headlines' series)
Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social
Sciences
School of English
18.30
Thursday 14th May
J.M. Synge Theatre, Arts Building
Trinity College Dublin
http://toibintcd.eventbrite.com
Booking Required. Places are
Limited

Dr Clare Clarke is an Assistant Professor in the School of English, where she
teaches Nineteenth Century Literature
“When Oscar Wilde stood trial in
1895 for ‘committing acts of gross
indecency with certain male
persons’ the prosecution looked
to Wilde's fiction for references
to homosexual desire. In court,
sections of his 1891 novel The
Picture of Dorian Gray were read
aloud as evidence of Wilde's
shameless love for young men.”

Dr Daragh Downes teaches a year-long option on Dickens in the School of English
“In novels like Dombey and
Son, David Copperfield and
Great Expectations, Charles
Dickens gently challenges
Victorian England’s
heteronormative
assumptions by depicting
inter-male relationships as
sites of desire, affection
and nurturing.”

Dr David O’Shaughnessy is Assistant Professor in Eighteenth-Century Studies at
the School of English
“Anne Lister (1791-1840) was a
staunch Anglican Tory, a
somewhat unforgiving estate
manager, and a notable
traveller. Her longstanding
relationship with Anne Walker
is documented in detail in her
diary (4m words), simply one
strand of her politically
conservative, although
eventful, life.”

“In several plays Shakespeare
depicts men or women who
express intense affection for
other characters of the same
gender: for instance, Helena
and Hermia in A Midsummer
Night's Dream, Antonio in The
Merchant of Venice, and King
Richard in Richard II.”
Dr Ema Vyroubalová is Assistant Professor in the School of English; her research
focuses on the Renaissance period, especially drama

Dr Eve Patten lectures on twentieth-century British and Irish literature in the
School of English
“Virginia Woolf developed a
close relationship with
Elizabeth Bowen, and drew
on the Irish writer’s affections
to tease her former lover, Vita
Sackville-West. ‘Elizabeth and
I clasped hands over the
wishing well in her garden’,
she wrote to Sackville-West in
1934, adding that ‘my one
wish is to make you jealous’.”

“In 1928 Radclyffe Hall's
ground-breaking lesbian
novel, The Well of
Loneliness, was the subject
of an obscenity trial in the
UK, as a result of which all
copies of the novel were
withdrawn and destroyed.”
Dr Heather Ingman is an Adjunct Professor at the School of English

Prof Nicholas Grene is the 1867 Professor of English Literature at the
School of English
'Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments',
Shakespeare, Sonnet 116.
“With his allusion to the Anglican wedding service, the poet affirms
to his male friend that their shared gender can be no bar to their
'marriage of true minds’.”

Dr Pádraic Whyte is a director of the MPhil programme in Children’s Literature at
the School of English
“One of the first books written for
children that engages with same-
sex relationships was ‘I’ll Get There
... It Better Be Worth the Trip
(1969), published just weeks
before the riots at the Stonewall
Inn, NYC. The first picturebook
depicting a same-sex parent
family was Jenny Lives with Eric
and Martin (1981).”

Dr Paul Delaney is Assistant Professor in Irish Writing at the School of English
“In Mary Lavelle, The Land of
Spices and As Music and
Splendour, Kate O’Brien traces
the possibility of same-sex
relationships in a repressive
environment, and suggests
that such relationships offer
the potential for intellectual
liberation as well as erotic
satisfaction.”

Stephen Kenneally is a final-year doctoral student at the School of English
“Uranian Worlds: A Guide to
Alternative Sexuality in
Science Fiction, Fantasy, and
Horror (1983/1990) was the
first systematic attempt to
catalogue all the instances of
gay, lesbian, bisexual, and
transgender representation
in these genres.”

Dr Philip Coleman is an Assistant Professor at the School of English
“It has been said that Pearse
Hutchinson is ‘particularly
impressive as a love poet’,
but the emotional power and
erotic charge of his love
poems are born out of his
experience as one of the
most important homosexual
Irish poets of the twentieth
century.”

Dr Brendan O’Connell lectures on medieval literature at the School of English
“In his depiction of intense
male friendships, Chaucer
may have been inspired by
the life-long companionship
of Sir John Clanvowe and Sir
William Neville, who were
buried together under a
joint coat-of-arms recalling
that of a husband and wife.”

'The Embrace of Love: Being Gay in Ireland Now'

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'The Embrace of Love: Being Gay in Ireland Now'