Uranian poetry
Encyclopedia
The Uranians were a small and somewhat clandestine group of male pederastic poet
s who published works between 1858 (when William Johnson Cory
published Ionica) and 1930. Although most of them were English
, they had counterparts in the United States and France.
in the 1860s, with the name later taken up by John Addington Symonds
and others who rendered it as 'Uranian
'. However, it has been argued that this derivation and coinage, at least for the English-speaking countries, is independent of Ulrichs's "coinage". In his work Secreted Desires: The Major Uranians: Hopkins, Pater and Wilde, Michael M. Kaylor writes:
and a sentimental infatuation of older men for adolescent boys, as well as by a use of conservative verse
forms.
The chief poets of this clique were William Johnson Cory, Lord Alfred Douglas
, Montague Summers
, John Francis Bloxam
, Charles Kains Jackson
, John Gambril Nicholson
, Rev. E. E. Bradford
, John Addington Symonds
, Edmund John
, John Moray Stuart-Young
, Charles Edward Sayle
, Fabian S. Woodley
, and several pseudonymous authors such as "Philebus" (John Leslie Barford
) and "A. Newman" (Francis Edwin Murray
). The flamboyantly eccentric novelist Frederick Rolfe
(also known as "Baron Corvo") was a unifying presence in their social network, both within and without Venice
.
The fame of their work was limited by late Victorian
and Edwardian taboo
s, by the extremely small editions (often privately printed) in which their verse was promulgated, and by the generally saccharine and occasionally misogynistic nature of their poetry. However, historian Neil McKenna has argued that Uranian poetry had a central role in the upper-class homosexual subcultures of the Victorian period. He insisted that poetry was the main medium through which writers such as Oscar Wilde
, George Ives
and Rennell Rodd, 1st Baron Rennell
sought to challenge the anti-homosexual prejudices of the age.
Marginally associated with their world were more famous writers such as Edward Carpenter
, as well as the obscure but prophetic poet-printer Ralph Chubb
. His majestic volumes of lithographs celebrated the adolescent boy as an Ideal. The Uranian quest to revive the Greek notion of paiderastia was not successful because of the conservative Victorian mores of the day.
There are only two book-length studies of the Uranians: Love In Earnest by Timothy d'Arch Smith (1970) and Secreted Desires: The Major Uranians: Hopkins, Pater and Wilde by Michael Matthew Kaylor (2006; available as an open-access E-text) . Kaylor expands the Uranian canon by situating several major Victorians within the group. Other critics, such as Richard Dellamora (Masculine Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism, 1990 ) and Linda Dowling (Hellenism and Homosexuality in Victorian Oxford, 1994 ) have contributed more recently to the scant knowledge about this group. Paul Fussell
discusses Uranian poetry in his book The Great War and Modern Memory (1975), suggesting that it provided a model for homoerotic representations in the war poets of World War I
(e.g. Wilfred Owen
).
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
s who published works between 1858 (when William Johnson Cory
William Johnson Cory
William Johnson Cory , born William Johnson, was an educator and poet, born at Torrington, and educated at Eton, where he was afterwards a renowned master, nicknamed Tute by his pupils...
published Ionica) and 1930. Although most of them were English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
, they had counterparts in the United States and France.
Origin of the term
Their name is commonly believed to derive from the work of the German theorist and campaigner Karl Heinrich UlrichsKarl Heinrich Ulrichs
for the periodical directory, see Ulrich's Periodicals DirectoryKarl-Heinrich Ulrichs , is seen today as the pioneer of the modern gay rights movement.-Early life:...
in the 1860s, with the name later taken up by John Addington Symonds
John Addington Symonds
John Addington Symonds was an English poet and literary critic. Although he married and had a family, he was an early advocate of male love , which he believed could include pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships. He referred to it as l'amour de l'impossible...
and others who rendered it as 'Uranian
Uranian
frame|right|From [[John Addington Symonds]]' 1891 book A Problem in Modern Ethics.Uranian is a 19th century term that referred to a person of a third sex — originally, someone with "a female psyche in a male body" who is sexually attracted to men, and later extended to cover homosexual gender...
'. However, it has been argued that this derivation and coinage, at least for the English-speaking countries, is independent of Ulrichs's "coinage". In his work Secreted Desires: The Major Uranians: Hopkins, Pater and Wilde, Michael M. Kaylor writes:
Given that the prominent Uranians were trained Classicists, I consider ludicrous the view, widely held, that ‘Uranian’ derives from the German apologias and legal appeals written by Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs in the 1860s, though his coinage Urning — employed to denote ‘a female psyche in a male body’ — does indeed derive from the same Classical sources, particularly the Symposium. Further, the Uranians did not consider themselves the possessors of a ‘female psyche’; the Uranians are not known, as a group, to have read works such as Forschungen über das Räthsel der mannmännlichen Liebe (Research on the Riddle of Male-Male Love); the Uranians were opposed to Ulrichs’s claims for androphilic, homoerotic liberation at the expense of the paederastic; and, even when a connection was drawn to such Germanic ideas and terminology, it appeared long after the term ‘Uranian’ had become commonplace within Uranian circles, hence was not a ‘borrowing from’ but a ‘bridge to’ the like-minded across the Channel by apologists such as Symonds. (p. xiii, footnote)
The movement
The work of the Uranian poets was characterized by an idealised appeal to the history of Ancient GreeceAncient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
and a sentimental infatuation of older men for adolescent boys, as well as by a use of conservative verse
Verse (poetry)
A verse is formally a single line in a metrical composition, e.g. poetry. However, the word has come to represent any division or grouping of words in such a composition, which traditionally had been referred to as a stanza....
forms.
The chief poets of this clique were William Johnson Cory, Lord Alfred Douglas
Lord Alfred Douglas
Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas , nicknamed Bosie, was a British author, poet and translator, better known as the intimate friend and lover of the writer Oscar Wilde...
, Montague Summers
Montague Summers
Augustus Montague Summers was an eccentric English author and clergyman. He is known primarily for his scholarly work on the English drama of the 17th century, as well as for his idiosyncratic studies on witches, vampires, and werewolves, in all of which he professed to believe...
, John Francis Bloxam
John Francis Bloxam
John Francis Bloxam was an English Uranian author and churchman. Bloxam was an undergraduate at Exeter College, Oxford when his story, the Priest and the Acolyte, appeared in the sole issue of the Chameleon: a Bazaar of Dangerous and Smiling Chances, a periodical which he also served as editor....
, Charles Kains Jackson
Charles Kains Jackson
Charles Philip Castle Kains Jackson was an English poet closely associated with the Uranian school.-Biography:Beginning in 1888, in addition to a career as a lawyer, he served as editor for the periodical The Artist and Journal of Home Culture, which became something of an official periodical for...
, John Gambril Nicholson
John Gambril Nicholson
John Gambrill Nicholson was an English school teacher, Uranian poet, and an amateur photographer. He was the quintessential Uranian, forming the center of that semi-underground world, and frequently writing introductions for and receiving dedications from his peers.-Biography:John Gambrill...
, Rev. E. E. Bradford
Edwin Emmanuel Bradford
The Reverend Edwin Emmanuel Bradford was an English clergyman and Uranian poet and novelist. He attended Exeter College, Oxford, received his B.A. in 1884, and was awarded a D.D. He was vicar of Nordelph, Downham Market, Norfolk, from 1905 to 1944. Towards the beginning of his life Bradford was an...
, John Addington Symonds
John Addington Symonds
John Addington Symonds was an English poet and literary critic. Although he married and had a family, he was an early advocate of male love , which he believed could include pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships. He referred to it as l'amour de l'impossible...
, Edmund John
Edmund John
Edmund John was a British poet of the Uranian school. His verses were modeled on the Symbolist poetry of Swinburne and other earlier poets. Much of his work was condemned by critics for being overly decadent and unfashionable. He fought in the First World War but was invalided out in 1916...
, John Moray Stuart-Young
John Moray Stuart-Young
John Moray Stuart-Young was an English Uranian poet, memoirist, novelist and merchant trader. Born John James Young in the slums of Manchester, Stuart-Young was poorly educated and treated badly by those around him. Beaten by his laborer father, his mother was forced to take in washing. All of his...
, Charles Edward Sayle
Charles Edward Sayle
Charles Edward Sayle was an English Uranian poet, literary scholar and librarian. He was born the son of Robert and Priscilla Caroline Sayle. He later served as an under-librarian at Cambridge University Library...
, Fabian S. Woodley
Fabian S. Woodley
Fabian Strachan Woodley, MC was a British poet of the Uranian school. He was born in Bristol and educated at Cheltenham College and University College, Oxford...
, and several pseudonymous authors such as "Philebus" (John Leslie Barford
John Leslie Barford
John Leslie Barford was an English Uranian poet who wrote under the pseudonym of Philebus. According to Timothy D'Arch Smith, he was a doctor in the Merchant Navy. His works, which were privately printed, include Ladslove Lyrics , Young Things , Fantasies and Whimsies .-References:Smith, Timothy...
) and "A. Newman" (Francis Edwin Murray
Francis Edwin Murray
Francis Edwin Murray was a Uranian poet and publisher of the late 19th and early 20th century. Almost totally forgotten today, his books of verse include Rondeaux of Boyhood , limited to 300 copies, and From a Lover's Garden: More Rondeaux and Other Verses of Boyhood , limited to 225 copies. The...
). The flamboyantly eccentric novelist Frederick Rolfe
Frederick Rolfe
Frederick William Rolfe, better known as Baron Corvo, and also calling himself 'Frederick William Serafino Austin Lewis Mary Rolfe', , was an English writer, artist, photographer and eccentric...
(also known as "Baron Corvo") was a unifying presence in their social network, both within and without Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
.
The fame of their work was limited by late Victorian
Victorian morality
Victorian morality is a distillation of the moral views of people living at the time of Queen Victoria's reign and of the moral climate of the United Kingdom throughout the 19th century in general, which contrasted greatly with the morality of the previous Georgian period...
and Edwardian taboo
Taboo
A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...
s, by the extremely small editions (often privately printed) in which their verse was promulgated, and by the generally saccharine and occasionally misogynistic nature of their poetry. However, historian Neil McKenna has argued that Uranian poetry had a central role in the upper-class homosexual subcultures of the Victorian period. He insisted that poetry was the main medium through which writers such as Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, George Ives
George Cecil Ives
George Ives was a German-English poet, writer, penal reformer and early gay rights campaigner.-Life and career:...
and Rennell Rodd, 1st Baron Rennell
Rennell Rodd, 1st Baron Rennell
James Rennell Rodd, 1st Baron Rennell, GCB, GCMG, GCVO, PC , known as Sir Rennell Rodd before 1933, was a British diplomat, poet and politician...
sought to challenge the anti-homosexual prejudices of the age.
Marginally associated with their world were more famous writers such as Edward Carpenter
Edward Carpenter
Edward Carpenter was an English socialist poet, socialist philosopher, anthologist, and early gay activist....
, as well as the obscure but prophetic poet-printer Ralph Chubb
Ralph Chubb
Ralph Nicholas Chubb was an English poet, printer, and artist. Heavily influenced by Whitman, Blake, and the Romantics, his work was the creation of a highly intricate personal mythology, one that was anti-materialist and sexually revolutionary.-Life:Ralph Chubb was born in Harpenden, Hertfordshire...
. His majestic volumes of lithographs celebrated the adolescent boy as an Ideal. The Uranian quest to revive the Greek notion of paiderastia was not successful because of the conservative Victorian mores of the day.
There are only two book-length studies of the Uranians: Love In Earnest by Timothy d'Arch Smith (1970) and Secreted Desires: The Major Uranians: Hopkins, Pater and Wilde by Michael Matthew Kaylor (2006; available as an open-access E-text) . Kaylor expands the Uranian canon by situating several major Victorians within the group. Other critics, such as Richard Dellamora (Masculine Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism, 1990 ) and Linda Dowling (Hellenism and Homosexuality in Victorian Oxford, 1994 ) have contributed more recently to the scant knowledge about this group. Paul Fussell
Paul Fussell
Paul Fussell is an American cultural and literary historian, author and university professor. His writings cover a variety of genres, from scholarly works on eighteenth-century English literature to commentary on America’s class system...
discusses Uranian poetry in his book The Great War and Modern Memory (1975), suggesting that it provided a model for homoerotic representations in the war poets of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
(e.g. Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War...
).