The Wilde Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde and the Queer Moment by Alan Sinfield

This is definitely the best book of literary criticism that I have read so far (but admittedly I haven't read that many). I needed to read one little bit of it for a paper, but it was so fascinating that I read it from cover to cover. Starting from the assumption that Oscar Wilde is the ultimate 'gay icon' because he is effeminate, refined, outrageous and stylish, Alan Sinfield shows that this is actually the other way around; Wilde's trails were the point in the cultural consciousness when all these attributes came together to define and identify the figure of 'the homosexual'. Along the way, Sinfield presents a comprehensive, well-researched, nuanced story of sexuality since the early modern era, investigates the associations and concepts surrounding ideas such as 'effeminacy', 'aestheticism',  'style' and same-sex attraction throughout history, and questions how we define our identity. And he does all of this with incredibly clarity; no overblown language, over-theorising or pretensions, but lucid, assertive, clean style to present very daring and original ideas. The only part that I didn't like was the last chapter about the future of queer identity, because that part actually did get too theoretical and complex (and very far away from Wilde). This book is so incredibly daring in the ways it posits how people thought about themselves, their relationships, their identity, their sexuality at various points in the past. Sinfield also (to my infinite delight) calls out Foucault, Freud, and critics who 'queer the canon' excessively. So basically my worst enemies in the field of humanities. I am actually kind of shocked that this book was published in 1994 and literary criticism is still ploughing on ahead with its over-theorised gender and Freudian criticism. Generally, I am in love with this book, and it has profoundly changed not only the way I read literature, but the way I see life.