ABSTRACT
Few critics have ventured to suggest, and only in passing, that John Cleland purposely wrote a homoerotic text. As Sabor details, until the mid-to-late 1980s critics routinely generalized the homophobia expressed by some of Memoirs' characters to the novel as a whole. Simmons's explanation of Memoirs' sodomitical episode closely resembled those offered by Edelman, Kopelson, and McFarlane, apart from his choice of theorist. Critics and historians seem not quite to have realized, or at least not to have articulated, how extraordinary Cleland's treatment of male-male sex actually is. Cleland violates thoroughly the period's conventions for representing male homosexuality. As for Cleland, there is, perhaps, a momentary hint of sodomitical love in that "long-breath'd kiss" exchanged while the young sparks pursue their "project of preposterous pleasure". The omission of any speculation about Cleland's intentions, much less sexuality, was no oversight. Hammond's work was itself a closeted text, in which he covertly unmasked Cleland as a closeted writer.
