Same Sex Love In Western Literary Traditions Across Historical Periods

Abstract

This paper examines the representation of same-sex love in Western literary traditions across historical periods, tracing its shifting visibility in response to cultural, social, and political contexts. From the veiled homoeroticism of Homer’s Iliad and Sappho’s lyric poetry, to the coded expressions in Shakespeare’s sonnets, the clandestine intimacies of Emily Dickinson’s letters and the public flamboyance of Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, and finally to the expansive affirmations of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and contemporary works such as Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, literature has continually negotiated same-sex desire. The study employs queer theoretical frameworks, including Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s “epistemology of the closet” and “homosocial continuum,” Judith Butler’s performativity of gender and desire, José Esteban Muñoz’s “utopian performativity,” and Michel Foucault’s concept of sexuality as a social construct, to analyse how writers encode, conceal, or celebrate queer intimacy. By situating texts within their historical and cultural milieus, the paper demonstrates both continuity and rupture: queer desire persists across time, yet its articulation shifts from silence and coded metaphor to radical openness and unapologetic affirmation. Ultimately, the paper argues that literature functions as a space of resistance, negotiation, and affirmation, bearing witness to the enduring human capacity for love and connection in all its forms.