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Alan Hollinghurstin The Folding Starin goottilainen labyrintti ja intertekstuaalinen kartasto

• Pia Livia Hekanaho Helsingin Diakoniaopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74818

Abstract

The Man Who Keeps Losing His WayQueer Intertextuality and Gothic Motives in Alan Hollinghurst’s The Folding Star

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.