This makes me wonder if the reason "friend" become so aggressively platonic later is a conservative reaction against this kind of usage - an attempt to smother the queer reading of the word?
In the absence of any research on the subject whatsoever, I would be willing to believe it. I have seen language—and gender roles—polarize in my lifetime.
I'm also so curious why Sayers contributed to the magazine, because a queer magazine strikes me as outside her usual bailiwick. Did she have friends involved in the magazine?
She did, although that doesn't entirely explain it to me: one of her contributions is sort of generically Christian, but the other is narrated from the more loving side of an affair: "I am not sadder that we have been friends / Not lonelier, loving you." There's some discussion in the modern preface; I poked a little at the lesbian representation in her books and it turned out to be more complex than I had remembered or noticed, which means there is almost certainly more (if my high school gaydar of a rock thought that Eiluned Price and Sylvia Marriott of Strong Poison (1930) were a couple, there must have been textual suggestion for it). I know that not every poetic "I" is autobiographical, but in this case I really want to know. It's a rather Housman-like poem.
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Date: 2021-08-09 05:35 am (UTC)In the absence of any research on the subject whatsoever, I would be willing to believe it. I have seen language—and gender roles—polarize in my lifetime.
I'm also so curious why Sayers contributed to the magazine, because a queer magazine strikes me as outside her usual bailiwick. Did she have friends involved in the magazine?
She did, although that doesn't entirely explain it to me: one of her contributions is sort of generically Christian, but the other is narrated from the more loving side of an affair: "I am not sadder that we have been friends / Not lonelier, loving you." There's some discussion in the modern preface; I poked a little at the lesbian representation in her books and it turned out to be more complex than I had remembered or noticed, which means there is almost certainly more (if my high school gaydar of a rock thought that Eiluned Price and Sylvia Marriott of Strong Poison (1930) were a couple, there must have been textual suggestion for it). I know that not every poetic "I" is autobiographical, but in this case I really want to know. It's a rather Housman-like poem.