• Lt Dr.S. Nithya

  Author

This paper analyzes the use of queer poetics in the rereading of traditional poetry using works by Shakespeare, Dickinson, and Whitman. Queer poetics becomes a challenge to the heteronormative readings of classical texts by disclosing non-normative desires, fluid identities, and gender and sexual subversion. The paper illustrates that queer readings bring new insights that challenge conventional understandings of love, intimacy, and gender through case studies on Sonnet 18, the love poems by Dickinson and Leaves of Grass. Queer poetics rediscovers the ambiguities and nuances of human desire and identity which are frequently ignored in traditional interpretations by refusing to apply fixed identities. This method recontextualizes classical texts in a more inclusive literary culture, where marginalized voices and points of view can come out. The article further examines how queer poetics influenced a modern approach to literary criticism, as well as how it helped to transform literary criticism by making it more diverse and inclusive. Further studies can also deepen the scope of queer poetics to other literary traditions outside of the West and how it could be used in the future to discuss other forms of themes, including power and politics, in classical poetry. In the end, queer poetics can provide a shifting, changing model of reinterpreting classical literature, supporting a more participatory interpretation of literary texts and their cultural relevance.

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