"He walks eternally": Beauty queries and queer legacy, from Shakespeare to Keats to Wilde

This essay examines the literary genealogy of queer legacy that connects William Shakespeare, John Keats, and Oscar Wilde. I explore how their works and artistic identities influenced one another and shaped the broader queer literary pantheon as a whole. Beginning with Shakespeare’s profound impact on Keats, I analyze how the Bard became a symbol of artistic inheritance for the Romantic poet, particularly in Keats’s reflections on beauty, truth, and posterity. I then trace Keats’s influence on Wilde, examining how Wilde loved not only Keats’s written aesthetic, but his bodily beauty. Using The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Portrait of Mr. W.H., I trace how we see Wilde’s queer aesthetics and subsequent artistic legacy cementing themselves into permanency thanks in part to his reverence for Keats. In the conclusion, I examine how these three authors inspired queer artists throughout subsequent centuries, leading up to contemporary novels such as Henry Henry by Allen Bratton or Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston.