Edward Prime-Stevenson’s Imre: A Memorandum (1906) as Travel Writing (Accepted)

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
This paper draws a parallel between sexual modernism and culture shock in Imre: A Memorandum by American music critic and author Edward Prime-Stevenson by reading the novelette as travel writing. The novella is considered the first openly gay fiction in English with a happy ending known to day. Critics often see the author’s biography in the memoirs of the travelling English narrator Oswald (see James Gifford’s introduction to the novel [2003] and Those Restless Pilgrimages [2002] edited by Tom Sargant). However, rarely do they analyse the text as travel writing and consider Oswald’s stay in the Hungarian milieu in detail. Imre was written in a crucial period of gay history. Following the endeavours of sexual modernists of German-speaking Central Europe, English-speaking doctors and authors started writing about the history and medicalisation of same-sex desire. For instead, the term “homosexual” had just barely entered the English language in 1892; however, the distribution of texts openly concerning same-sex desire was limited; therefore, these “scripts” were virtually inaccessible to lay-readers including homosexual men as well. Prime-Stevenson’s novelette took the opportunity to offer an open description of homosexual love when the term “homosexual” had not yet been associated with pejorative connotations. Drawing on Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey (1999) and Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera’s lecture “Budapest in American Literature and Film” (2019), I intend to demonstrate that Imre: A Memorandum as writing encapsulates the travels and translations of sexual modernism from German-speaking Central Europe to English-speaking cultures.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Zsolt Bojti is doctoral student at the Doctoral School of Literary Studies of Eötvös Loránd University. He graduated with honours in 2016 with a degree in English literature. His doctoral dissertation focuses on the connection between Hungarophilia and sexual modernism in fin-de-siécle gay literature. Currently, he is working on the first-ever Hungarian translation and edition of Imre: A Memorandum by Edward Prime-Stevenson, supported by the ÚNKP-19-3 New National Excellence Program of the Ministry for Innovation and Technology.