Word Made Flesh: Richard Rodriguez's "Late Victorians" as Nativity Story

• Published in: Texas studies in literature and language Vol. 40; no. 4; pp. 442 - 459
• Main Author: Tilden, Norma
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Austin University of Texas Press 22-12-1998; University of Texas at Austin (University of Texas Press)
• Subjects: AIDS (Disease); American literature; Authors; Autobiographies; Catholicism; Catholicity; Christianity; Criticism and interpretation; Homosexuality; Hunger; Liturgy; Narratives; Paradise; Portrayals; Reading; Reflexivity; Religious aspects; Religious rituals; Rodriguez, Richard; Rodriguez, Richard (American writer); Sex; Sexual behavior; Sexual behaviour; Spirituality; Stereotypes; Subjectivity; Titles; Victorians; Writers; United States; United States > US; San Francisco California
• ISSN: 0040-4691; 1534-7303

Exploring his own relation to the gay community of which he writes - and thereby effecting his own subjectivity among the "late Victorians" whom he eulogizes - Rodriguez plots a nativity narrative that replicates the Catholic view of the Nativity as a "feast" celebrating God's condescension into human flesh and, in this case, human words. Rodriguez constructs one more inversion, a litany of titles, except that in Catholic tradition the litany is a rite of supplication, and these titles are all reflexive, self-accusatory, and confessional: "These learned to love what is corruptible, while I, barren skeptic, reader of St. Augustine, curator of the earthly paradise, inheritor of the empty mirror, I shift my tailbone upon the cold, hard pew." [...] yet, despite Rodriguez's confìteor, isn't this pew exactly where the devout Catholic belongs during the ritual performance?