The Ruling Passion: British Colonial Allegory and the Paradox of Homosexual Desire

Michael Moon, Duke University
"Lane's readings are carried out at a considerably higher level of intellectual sophistication than one finds in most recent work that has dealt with issues of masculinity in imperialist and colonialist fictions."


Joseph Bristow, University of York
"The Ruling Passion is expertly researched, demonstrates an authoritative command of theoretical knowledge, and advances our understanding of the complexities involved in representing cross-cultural and cross-class homosocial and homosexual desire. It is a highly original work of considerable academic stature in the rapidly developing field of gay male cultural criticism."


Book Description
In The Ruling Passion, Christopher Lane examines the relations among masculinity, homosexual desire, and empire in British colonialist and imperialist fictions at the turn of the twentieth century. Questioning the popular assumption that Britain's empire functioned with symbolic efficiency on sublimated desire, Lane presents a counterhistory of the empire's many layers of conflict and ambivalence.


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