"Henry Abelove addresses the willful misreading of Freud's views on homosexuality among American psychoanalysts; reconsiders sexual practice during England's long eighteenth century; assesses the contemporary relevance of Thoreau's Walden, particularly to queer politics; and traces the emergence of a distinctly queer critique of previous approaches to lesbian and gay history. In the first of the new essays, Abelove uncovers the origins and founding assumptions of American studies as a scholarly discipline; the second evaluates the impact of literature - specifically the same-sex eroticism found in works by such writers as James Baldwin, Elizabeth Bishop, Paul Bowles, and Ned Rorem - on the gay liberation movement of the 1970s."--Jacket.