Speaking the Unspeakable: storia della tradizione omosessuale nella letteratura di lingua inglese

3 ABSTRACT Homosexuality has always been a controversial topic, since the rise of ancient homoerotic poetry in Greek and Roman periods to the contemporary and explicit literature of our times. During the last century, this behaviour has been condemned and kept secret, even if, after the fifties, many men and women revealed their 'diversity' and in the seventies homosexuality became a visible presence in society. Today same-sex couples have civil rights in many Western Countries and, after the great epidemiology of AIDS and HIV in the eighties, homosexuals are now usually accepted. Literature has an important role in this journey of gradual liberation and affirmation: thanks to the written words, many gays can express their love, their fears and their emotions to homosexual and heterosexual readers. In what way homosexuality and gay people are represented in English and American Literature? How the society of the '900 coped with “the love that dare not speak its name”? My essay is a journey through the last century in search of novels, poetry and essays about this topic, which lead the reader to the discovery of 'an another' story in Anglophone literature and to the awareness of the 'unspeakableness' of homosexuality. The last chapter of my work deals with three different stories that illustrate this controversial topic from different points of view and situations: the novels The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal, A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood and the short story “Brokeback Mountain” by Annie Proulx.