tiresian poetics modernism sexuality voice 1888 2001
blind seer articulate dead and mythic transsexual the figure of tiresias has always represented a liminal identity and forms of knowledge associated with the crossing of epistemological and ontological boundaries . in twentieth century literature the boundaries crossed and embodied by tiresias are primarily sexual and the liminal and usually prophetic knowledge associated with tiresias is based in sexual difference and sexual pleasure . indeed in literature of the twentieth century tiresias has come to function as a cultural shorthand for queer sexualities .