Languages and Literature, University of Birmingham
Thesis title:
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, a significant group of poetic works emerged which foregrounded the soul as a means of examining the intricacies of queer sexual selfhood. Redirecting focus from the queer body as a site of perversion and sexual depravity – a notion which pervaded the late-Victorian cultural consciousness – toward the immaterial soul, such works put forth radical ideas of sexual subjectivity and imagined alternative models of same-sex love that were not predicated on sex or physical intimacy. This poetic treatment of the soul by queer writers in the late-Victorian era forms the principal focus of my doctoral research, and this project will investigate the ways in which a particular set of poets established in the final decades of the nineteenth century a mode of self-construction and expression in poetry that was contingent on the characterisation and transcendent capabilities of the soul.
Charles Gough, 'Re-reading the Radical in John Addington Symonds's Memoirs: Poetry, Intertextuality, and Queer Self-Construction', Romance, Revolution, and Reform, Issue 5 (January 2023), 10-30, <https://www.rrrjournal.com/issue/5/article/re-reading-the-radical>
Charles Gough, "Recovering 'Angelo': The Textual (De)Construction of John Addington Symonds's Secret Sonnet Sequence", English Postgraduate Symposium, University of Warwick. (May 2023)
Charles Gough, "(Queer) Lyric Subjectivity in the Late-Victorian Sonnet Sequence: John Addington Symonds's Portrait of a Soul", English, Drama & Creative Studies PGR Symposium, University of Birmingham. (Dec 2022)
Charles Gough, "Marc-André Raffalovich's Queer Mysticism", BAVS 2022: British Association for Victorian Studies Annual Conference, University of Birmingham. (Sept 2022)
Charles Gough, "Queer Mysticism in Marc-André Raffalovich's 'Cyril'", Midlands4Cities Research Festival. (June 2022)
Charles Gough, "John Addington Symonds's Intertextual Selves: Poetry and Queer Self-Construction in the Memoirs", Oxford English Graduate Conference, University of Oxford. (June 2022)
Charles Gough, "Queer Mysticism in Marc-André Raffalovich's 'Cyril'", English Postgraduate Symposium, University of Warwick. (May 2022)
Other Talks
Charles Gough, "Queer Eschatology and Community in the George Ives Archive", 19CC Research Seminar, University of Birmingham. (28 Feb 2024)
Charles Gough, "Homosexual Eschatology in the Diary of George Cecil Ives", Familiar Terms Research Series, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. (5 December 2023)
Charles Gough, "A 'Fragmentary Soul': Reconstructing John Addington Symonds's Secret Sonnet Sequence", English Literature Research Seminar, University of Birmingham. (3 May 2023)
British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS)
British Association of Decadence Studies (BADS)
University of Birmingham Nineteenth-Century Centre (19CC)
University of Birmingham
Birmingham City University
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