Out and proud: the difficult emergence of overt homosexual narrative in Australian fiction

Abstract

Overt male homosexual narrative evolved over a century, first through characterisation and then through point of view, though this slow evolution was constrained by legal, social and ethical problems. It would take most of the twentieth century before a homosexual was seen to be an insider, that is, that there were literary works with an overt homosexual point of view. This paper examines the emergence of overt male homosexual narrative in Australian fiction and explores the ethical, legal and social dimensions of moving such narrative from outside to inside.