In the most comprehensive study yet of homosexuality in the English Renaissance, Bruce R. Smith examines and rejects the assessments of homosexual acts in moral philosophy, laws, and medical books in favor of a poetics of homosexual desire. Smith isolates six different myths from classical literature and discusses each in relation to a particular Renaissance literary genre and to a particular part of the social structure of early modern England. Smith's new Preface places his work in the context of the continuing controversies in gay, lesbian, and bisexual studies. The best single analysis of the homoerotic element in Renaissance English literature. ?Keith Thomas, New York Review of Books Smith's lucid and subtle book offer[s] a poetics of homosexual desire. . . . Its scholarship, impressively broad and deftly deployed, aims to further a serious social purpose: the redemptive location of homosexual desire in history and the recuperation for our own time, through an understanding of its discursive embodiments, of that desire's changing imperatives and parameters. ?Terence Hawkes, Times Literary Supplement The great strength of Bruce Smith's book is that it does not sidestep the complex challenge of engaging in the sexual politics of the present while attending to the resistant discourses and practices of Renaissance England. Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England demonstrates how a commitment to the present opens up our understanding of the past. ?Peter Stallybrass, Shakespeare Quarterly A major contribution to the understanding of homosexuality in Renaissance England and by far the best and most comprehensive account yet offered of the homoeroticism that suffuses Renaissance literature. ?Claude J. Summers, Journal of Homosexuality
Product Identifiers
Publisher
The University of Chicago Press
ISBN-13
9780226763668
eBay Product ID (ePID)
95238280
Product Key Features
Subject Area
Gender Issues
Author
Bruce R. Smith
Publication Name
Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England: a Cultural Poetics
Format
Paperback
Language
English
Subject
Zoology
Publication Year
1995
Type
Textbook
Number of Pages
344 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
228mm
Item Width
153mm
Item Weight
506g
Additional Product Features
Title_Author
Bruce R. Smith
Topic
Literature
Country/Region of Manufacture
United States
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