Dissident Ghosts of Queer Language in Hope Mirrlees and E. M. Forster
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36399/GroundingsUG.16.461Keywords:
modernism , queer , ghostsAbstract
The essay compares Paris: A Poem by Hope Mirrlees and Howards End, a novel by E. M. Forster. I start by arguing that death is portrayed as a mysterious spectacle resulting in the ghostly presence of the dead among the living in both works. The spectre of Ruth Wilcox in Howards End and the dead haunting Paris subvert institutions: they act against the capitalist market resisting commodification of life and death while also opposing the rigid heteronormative timelines mixing past present and future. Ultimately, the ghosts in Forster and Mirrlees's works emphasise the ephemerality of text and language, inventing new ways to talk about queer identity freed from oppressive 'othering'. Escaping through the fractures in the institutions, the ghosts signify the desire for a new language to speak in a non-normative, 'queer' way.
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