SOURCE: "The Alienated Prophet: The Relationship Between Edward Carpenter's Psyche and the Development of His Metaphysic," in Forum for Modern Language Studies, Vol. XXIII, No. 3, July, 1987, pp. 193-209.

In the following essay, Rahman traces the influence of Carpenter's homosexuality on his ideas of the metaphysical.

Lecturing on Edward Carpenter in 1970 his namesake said: "It is probably true to say that the name of Edward Carpenter so far as it concerns the mass of our contemporaries, is forgotten."¹ And yet in his own lifetime he won an acclaim which seems incredible now in view of the lack of scholarly attention which has succeeded the encomiastic criticism of those days. Of this type of criticism the works of Mrs Havelock Ellis, Ernest Crosby, Tom Swan, Edward Lewis and Moncur Sime are some examples.² While most of them make the point that Carpenter's socialism and democracy are a product of his...