The gayest sculpture in history: Obscured male same-sex desire in the descriptions of the Antinous statues in eighteenth-century art history and nineteenth-century German fiction
Frohlich, Johannes
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/113137
Description
Title
The gayest sculpture in history: Obscured male same-sex desire in the descriptions of the Antinous statues in eighteenth-century art history and nineteenth-century German fiction
Author(s)
Frohlich, Johannes
Issue Date
2021-07-06
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Hilger, Stephanie M
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Hilger, Stephanie M
Committee Member(s)
Wade, Mara R
Niekerk, Carl H
Rosenthal, Lisa
Pollock, Anthony
Department of Study
Germanic Languages & Lit
Discipline
German
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Antinous
sculpture
gender
queer
fiction
art
literature
Abstract
Rarely has an ancient marble figure received as much attention in both art history and historical fiction as Antinous (c. AD 111-130). Antinous was emperor Hadrian’s (AD 76-138) companion, favorite, and beloved. Following his untimely and mysterious death in the Nile, the emperor deified Antinous, named a star after him, built him a city, and commissioned statues that were dispersed throughout the Roman Empire and praised for their exceptional beauty.
Although scholarship has analyzed the historical figure, art history’s and literature’s obsession with Antinous remains in the margins of scholarly interest. Today Antinous remains popular in gay subcultures as can be seen in a number of homoerotic fan fiction novels. Representing Antinous and his enigmatic relationship with the Roman emperor in popular culture is grounded in art as much as it is in history. The emphasis of this interdisciplinary dissertation is not the exploration of the historical figure’s sexual orientation, whether Antinous was gay, but how eighteenth-century art history and nineteenth-century German fiction imagined the relationship between Hadrian and Antinous. The first chapter explores the origin of the Antinous reception in late eighteenth-century art history, the second chapter outlines the emergence of Antinous as a marker for a homosexual identity in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the last two chapters analyze the literary devices that allowed his appearance in two popular historical novels in the late nineteenth century.
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