Ross Forman: 'Riding Wilde Waves: The Queer World of Multilingualism in 1895'

Ross Forman: 'Riding Wilde Waves: The Queer World of Multilingualism in 1895'

This thought paper will consider queerness in the context of multilingualism. How, from the late nineteenth century forward, did concepts of queer identity—sexological and medical, subcultural, pornographic—developed in the Anglophone environment travel across languages and cultures and, in so doing, shape concepts of sexuality and sexual behaviour? Although particular vocabularies are an important aspect of this engagement, the wider emphasis is on the mechanics of cross-linguistic thinking. My (speculative) prism will be the reporting of the Wilde trials in 1895 in Brazil and the resonances—and lack thereof—in the conceptualisation of homosexuality and “gross indecency” across geographical and cultural-linguistic divides.