The first extensive study of gay and lesbian historical fiction, this book demonstrates how the highly popular genre helps us understand gay and lesbian history. It shows not only why the genre should be taken more seriously by historians but also how it implicitly works to ameliorate divisions between Christianity and homosexuality. The book contends that gay and lesbian historical fictions model ways of approaching sexual and historical mystery not as a threat to understanding but as its ground. These fictions thus implicitly undermine the supposed dichotomy between secular and sacred ways of knowing, thereby expanding the resources for ethical debate about homosexuality.
“An astute reader, prodigiously well-read, Jones discovers inside queer historical novels the powerful ghosts of Christianities pronounced dead--ghosts who guard still the mysteries of articulate desire. He urges us not to exorcise them. He shows instead how to coax such scorching angels with the riddles of re-imagined memories."--Mark D. Jordan, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Religion at Emory University; Author of The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology and The Ethics of Sex
“This book succeeds splendidly on several different fronts. Jones has internalized every arcane turn in queer studies of the past fifteen years, yet writes with scrupulous clarity. More than an engaging and incisive analysis of gay and lesbian historical fiction, it is an original and significant contribution to gay and lesbian histories, and even to religious studies, Jones brilliantly uncovering the intimate interconnections between coming-out and conversion narratives. The result is a transdisciplinary and post-theoretical tour de force.”--Stephen D. Moore, Author of God’s Gym: Divine Male Bodies of the Bible and God’s Beauty Parlor: And Other Queer Spaces in and around the Bible
