The Belle Époque Queer Fairy Tale

This essay works to define, historicize, and probe the queer fairy tale subgenre. Recuperating Vladimir Propp’s syntagmatic formalism from a queer angle, I argue that fairy tales’ protean, fantastical qualities afford rapid and imaginative refashioning across languages by LGBTQ+ writers. In Belle Époque tales by Vernon Lee, Oscar Wilde, Laurence Housman, Jean Lorrain, and Renée Vivien, I locate a poignant vision of queer futurity.