SOURCE: "This Other Eden: Arcadia and the Homosexual Imagination," in Literary Visions of Homosexuality, The Haworth Press, 1983, pp. 13-34.

In the excerpt that follows, Fone suggests that gay male literature tends toward a certain image of Utopia. He substantiates his view with examples from the work of several nineteenth-century writers, including Gerard Manley Hopkins and Walt Whitman.

Those who would dwell in Arcadia seek out that secret Eden because of its isolation from the troubled world and its safety from the arrogant demands of those who would deny freedom, curtail human action, and destroy innocence and love. Arcadia can be a happy valley, a blessed isle, a pastoral retreat, or a green forest fastness. Those who search for that hidden paradise are often lovers, or the truly wise, trying, as one questing pilgrim put it, to escape from "the clank of the world."¹

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