title: Floating call boys and agile homosexuals: homophobia/Venice/history.
abstract: Because works of nonfiction are always composed of literary tropes and metaphors, they have to be read critically for the ways in which their truth claims are potentially structured by ideologies and stereotypes. This essay reads passages from Richard Sennett's sociological analysis Flesh and Stone, The Body and the City in Western Civilization and Joseph Brodsky's memoir Watermark in order to demonstrate how these alleged works of nonfiction shore up some dishearteningly familiar literary stereotypes of male homosexuality and participate in a tradition, dating from the 19th century, of linking the city of Venice with homosexuality and death.
authors.affiliation: a Department of English , Penn State Erie-The Behrend College , Erie , Pennsylvania , USA.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Champagne
mesh_terms: D049668:History, 15th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D063509:Homophobia / Q000266:history*; D018451:Homosexuality, Male / Q000266:history*; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D008297:Male; D013240:Stereotyping
keywords: Brodsky; Sennett; Venice; decay; homophobia; homosexuality; stereotypes