Avain 4/2010

84
The Man Who Keeps Losing His Way
Queer Intertextuality and Gothic Motives in Alan
Hollinghurst’s The Folding Star
Kirjallisuudentutkimuksen aikakauslehti AVAIN • 2010 • 4
A B S T R A C T S
The present article examines The Folding Star (1994), the second novel of Alan
Hollinghurst, a contemporary British author renowned for his portrayal of modern
urban gay life from the post-closet era gay male point of view. The article focuses on
this critically somewhat neglected novel located in the Belgian city of Bruges, famous
for its mediaeval architecture as well as for its role as the main locus of the Belgian
Symbolist art and literature. In particular, the article studies Hollinghurst’s intertextually
rich novel by investigating its Gothic and Symbolist motives and intertexts
in queer theoretical context, and by exploring the Gothic as a malleable literary tool
for discussing the various forms of desire and sexuality questioning heteronormative
structures. The article at hand focuses on representations of male homosexuality
reclaiming not only the pastoral but also the Gothic, and even more the underlying
Gothic features of the Symbolism manifested in The Folding Star.
Gothic fiction with its hyperbolic nature is not the first literary genre to be
associated with Hollinghurst’s erudite, exquisitely composed prose. Nonetheless, as a
literary form, Gothic writing is a malleable critical concept and not without relevance
to one of Hollinghurst’s novels. By investigating the noticeably Gothic elements in the
novel, the article discusses The Folding Star focusing on the Gothic as a literary mode,
examining the intertextual strategies employed in the novel. Gothic fiction has offered a
rich field of study for critics investigating literary representation of sexuality – especially
non-normative sexuality. Gothic fiction developed simultaneously with the formation
of the presently known categories of gender and sexuality. Consequently, Romantic and
Gothic writing as well as pastoral have recently been more and more often examined
together with the notion of queer. The present article advances this vivid discussion
by extending its examination to the interplay of Gothic and distinctively Symbolist
features of the novel.
Pia Livia Hekanaho