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heterotopia |literary hotels |queer studies |modernism |short stories

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E.M. Forster’s hotel literature has acquired increasing momentum within contemporary critical discourses on hotels in modernist mobilities, spatio-temporality, and geographies (Thacker 2003, Short 2019). In Forster’s critically neglected and underrepresented short story “Arthur Snatchfold” (1928; published posthumously in 1972), the hotel and its surroundings come to resemble a space of queer possibility that functions as a homoerotically-charged Foucauldian counter-site. With the story progressively acquiring the semblance of a “hotel case” (1987, 108) through the assumption of an inferred, imagined, but never really lived, queer life within the hotel premises, all normative ways of codifying sexual identity in “Arthur Snatchfold” are challenged. To exist meaningfully and move ahead with the exploration of their sexualities, the story’s sexual offenders have to resort to the green belt surrounding what the conventional morality perceives as “that deplorable hotel” (1987, 106). It is the hotel as a peculiar configuration that opens a range of possibilities for transgressive behaviours. This is also suggested in the failed attempts at policing the hotel premises. The hotel erotica in “Arthur Snatchfold” seems, by the same token, to be born out of the tension arising from the modernist urge to spatialize through the heterotopic transport of the protagonists from monochromatic domesticity towards the multihued hotel. In the immediate vicinity of the hotel and, in an illusory sort of way, within the plasticity of the hotel, the protagonists finally find refuge.

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liminality |home |heterotopia |space |homoerotic desire

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The text analyses the spaces of homosexual desire described in E. M. Forster’s novel Maurice as well as in two of his short stories, “The Other Boat” and “Dr Woolacott.” In Maurice the title character constantly experiences the dual, or rather changeable, nature of places witnessing (and dis- or encouraging) his pursuits of desire. In “The Other Boat” the relationship between Lionel and Cocoanut unfolds within the heterotopic space of a ship, while “Dr Woolacott” is an example of a story set in a space which is very peculiar, liminal, as only somewhere between daydreams and nightmares is the protagonist able to meet his phantom lover. It is noticeable that the protagonists of the mentioned narratives exist simultaneously in the official, codified social spaces and in “the secret places.” The disruptive, forbidden type of desire portrayed in the discussed texts can exist only in the “othered” spaces, spaces which often determine the character’s identities and fates, influence their perception profoundly but, at the same time, rarely seem permanent or certain.

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E.M. Forster |classical reception |Maurice |queer studies |English literature

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This paper examines the interplay between classical tropes and queer identities in selected examples from Forster, in particular how his appropriation and interpretation of the scholarly classicism typical of his upbringing represents a point of divergence from the Wildean, Philhellenist hinterground of the previous century. The spectral schoolmaster figure, represented by e.g. Mr Bons in The Celestial Omnibus is often unseated – his tenure is over and he can no longer dictate the terms of classical engagement – but this paper argues that Forster goes further in his reappropriation of the classical ideal. Whilst the late nineteenth-century’s queer, classicised aestheticism may be understood as grounded in the urban elite – extrapolated into the twentieth by the Platonism of the Cambridge Apostles (see: Clive in Maurice) – Forster’s understanding of queer classicism is a more universalised quality and one evident anywhere in the natural world, should one wish to look. The figure of Pan is of particular relevance here, investigating Forster’s engagement with a mythological figure so in vogue during this period.

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Maurice |Merchant Ivory films |British Museum |LGBT history |queer museology

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In an essay of 1920, “The Objects” (later republished as “For the Museum’s Sake”), Forster confronted the colonialist attitudes of the British Museum curator Wallis Budge (1857–1934) as expressed in his memoirs. This paper discusses Forster’s attitude toward national museums and their antiquities in this essay and in Maurice, and it suggests that Budge’s memoirs may have influenced the later, 1932, version of the novel. Forster’s nuanced and critical view of heritage has subsequently proved influential for a BM project on LGBTQ+ world history.

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E.M.Forster |public transport |mobilities |literary urban studies |individuality

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Writings of place experience contribute to mobility studies by casting light on individual perspectives and the shaping of memory by art. E.M. Forster had consistent but varied interest in public transport (PT) settings, especially those of trains but also trams and buses. Forster studies benefit from exploring his treatment of PT while asking if there are mobilities that are specifically Forsterian. Literary studies of mobilities develop here within the context of an interdisciplinary project concerned with the kinds of public space found on and around PT. In grasping the mobilities of an individual writer, biographical evidence is both indispensable and problematic. Forsterian mobilities repeat and modify those of earlier English literary authors, as when a journey in Howards End echoes one in W.M. Thackeray’s Pendennis. Equally, PT networks such as the tramway of Alexandria were for Forster markers of modernity. Most importantly for Forsterian mobilities, PT travel facilitates personal boundary-crossing.

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E. M. Forster |Where Angels Fear to Tread |embodied mobility |material mobility |gendered mobility |(im)mobility (in)justice

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This article proposes an interdisciplinary reading of E. M. Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread. It essentially argues that Forster’s novel offers a precious opportunity to tap into the reciprocal exchange between Mobility Studies and narrative practices. By examining the dynamics of movement and stasis in the novel, it sustains a dual emphasis on the way motion defines the aesthetic orientations of the narrative, and the way (im)mobility undergirds discourses of power and control. The narrative, itself a vehicle for the circulation of ideas and cultural representations, engages a discussion about who has the right to move and who is forced to stay put, and how (im)mobility shapes social and gendered spaces. Forster’s predilection for employing contrasts as a platform for his social critique advances mobility and immobility as major concerns in his novel. The article homes in on differential mobilities and discusses gendered motion and stasis.

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E. M. Forster |humanism |Edward Said |culture |tolerance |postcolonial

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This paper attempts a postcolonial reading of Forster’s humanism and suggests that the concept of tolerance is central to his conception of humanism. Taking a cue from Edward Said’s theorizations on humanism, the paper argues that Forster’s humanism is centered upon the agency of human individuality, especially in his novels Howards End and A Passage to India. Forster sees tolerance as a “force” able to connect different races, classes, and nations. The paper, through an exploration of Howards End and A Passage to India, emphasizes that Forster’s novels articulate and shape the culture of tolerance, which entails the ability to use one’s mind “rationally” “for the purposes of reflective understanding and genuine disclosure” and enables the “sense of community” crucial for the sustenance of civilizations and human race. The paper, thus, situates Forster’s works in the larger philosophical setting of Said’s humanistic beliefs and seeks to demonstrate that Howards End and A Passage to India may be viewed as a fictionalization of Edward Said’s theories of humanism.

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Anthropocene |lockdown |modernisation |modernist culture |The Machine Stops

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This article aims to explore how E. M. Forster’s ground-breaking story “The Machine Stops” manifests the notion of space, the air-ship, and the machine as a metonymic extension of capitalist modernity and Anthropocene. In doing so, within the framework of spatial criticism, it examines the concepts of universal commodification and cultural hegemonization, regarding the imposed lock-down of the machine that leads to immobility in Vashti and her son Kuno’s lives. The mapping of space in the shape of a hexagonal cell of a bee transgresses the boundaries between the self and the machine because the buttons decode the satisfaction of such characters as Vashti, who feel in a hurry all the time. However, the result is limbo mobility and mass destruction in a crisis, emerging from Kuno’s individual desire to find his way out of the economic expansion of the world space. The machine’s cognitive mapping for Vashti, which is incompatible with Kuno, delineates the maladaptation of machine life to cultural practices of survival.

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E. M. Forster |Adaptation Studies |Transmedia Adaptation |Transtemporal |Reception Studies |Popular Reception |Participatory Culture |film |radio |television |theatre |Digital Media |Digital Theatre |Production Studies |Literary Estates |Media Rights |Cultural Value |Institutions |Literary Paratexts |Unofficial Sequels |Fan Fiction |Publishing Industry |James Ivory |Merchant Ivory Productions |Visual Adaptation |Film Performance |Photogénie |LGBTQ+ |Queer Forster

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This essay advances the conversation around the subject of Forster and adaptation – or Forsterian adaptation – by appraising the current state of Forster/ian adaptations scholarship and proposing conceptual and methodological tools for advancing the study of this field. As a cross-disciplinary scholar of film, adaptation, literature, popular and critical reception, and digitally enabled participatory culture, I write with the more specific goal of heightening and extending transdisciplinary awareness of the materials available to be studied, the available methodologies, and their merits and limitations, while identifying issues and challenges for the development of a Forster/ian Adaptation Studies.

Structurally, the essay proceeds by identifying ten ‘themes’ – or important considerations – for the study of Forster/ian adaptation. The ten themes look substantially beyond ‘page-to-screen’ adaptation studies to demonstrate the roles and impacts of institutions, institutional practices, personal relations, the successive ‘new’ media of the past century and their advancing technologies and practices, commercial forces, and Forster’s literary estate (as the rights-holders and royalties beneficiaries for his works); while also calling for a closer, evidence-based, attention to film and media adaptation and production processes and their adaptational consequences; and foregrounding the importance of the visual and unscripted – performed, embodied, intangible and even accidental – elements and determinants of audio-visual adaptation.

Temporally, the essay conceptualises the field by proposing that there have been three phases of Forster/ian adaptation. Phase 1 (1942–1973) comprises those adaptations of Forster’s stories and novels written and produced (broadly) during his lifetime, always for non-cinematic media. Phase 2 comprises the 1984–1992 era of the Forster feature-films cycle, instigated by a (widely disregarded) institutional shift which brought a step-change in the nature of Forster adaptation: for the first time, the development of new adaptations of Forster’s novels, going back to the source, became the norm. Phase 3 comprises everything that comes after the 1984–1992 Forster feature films, plus certain earlier adaptations which fall outside the ‘classic adaptation’ category. This third (and current) phase is characterised by its heterogeneity: adaptation to a range of media, across a range of forms and aesthetic approaches, by creators with varied interests, but, I propose, spanning four main areas Sci-Fi Forster, Queer Forster, The Revisionist or Condescending Forster Adaptation, and twenty-first-century Forsterian Bio-Drama, Bio-Fiction and ‘Literary’ Paratexts.

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liberalism |E. M. Forster |Howards End |style |Lauren Oyler |autofiction

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This essay provides an example of Forster’s contemporary literary legacy beyond explicit re-workings of his texts and life. Building on existing scholarship, it adopts the concepts of spectral legacy and dialogue as a framework for thinking of legacies that are not a matter of straight descent, but of a later work standing in a more oblique relation to its precursor. The essay reads Lauren Oyler’s recent novel Fake Accounts (2021) as participating in such a spectral dialogue with Howards End. Forster’s conflicted liberal humanism – committed to the ameliorative potential of culture, on the one hand, and painfully aware of the limited social and political efficacy of this commitment, on the other – offers a framework for understanding the formal qualities of autofiction, one of the most visible trends in contemporary literature. The essay posits guilt, one of the primary qualities of liberal thinking both in Forster’s time and the present moment, as the core of this particular Forsterian legacy.