Camp Transvestism in Ackroyd’s Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994)
This essay focuses on the figure of the cross-dresser in Peter Ackroyd’s Neo-Victorian novel Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, which uses both on and off-stage female-to-male and male-to-female cross-dressing as a backdrop for an investigation into a series of gruesome murders. The essay first explo...
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| In: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/erea, |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Language: | Anglais |
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E-rea
2019
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| Online Access: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Summary: | This essay focuses on the figure of the cross-dresser in Peter Ackroyd’s Neo-Victorian novel Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, which uses both on and off-stage female-to-male and male-to-female cross-dressing as a backdrop for an investigation into a series of gruesome murders. The essay first explores the politics of cross-dressing, showing how the motif quite literally illustrates that gender is “performative”, in a Butlerian acceptation of the term, therefore allowing for an analysis of the constructedness of gender categories. Secondly, it examines the camp aesthetics of cross-dressing in the novel, a sensibility that challenges narrative categories and literary genres by reappropriating the codes of high and low culture. Finally, it demonstrates that the politics and aesthetics of cross-dressing are tied to a spiritual experience, reconnecting transvestism with its initial shamanic or religious dimension, thus turning the writing experience into a sacred performance of dispossession of identity. |
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