Modernism as Liberation: Czech Decadent Author Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic

• In Event: Literature and/as Liberation: Studying Early Queer Literature from Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

For Czech decadent poet and author Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic (1871-1951), modernism was an essential framework enabling him even to imagine queer liberation. This paper will examine queer themes in Karásek's groundbreaking trilogy The Three Magicians Novels (1907-1925) including Manfred Macmillan (1907) and Scarabaeus (1909) -- the safety of the fantastic, the sublimation of the femme fatale, and the subtext of queer criminalization -- before briefly considering their implications for Karásek's position in Czechoslovakia's sexual-minorities movement in the 1930s.

Author

• Carleton Bulkin, Independent Scholar