In this volume, the author offers a substantial reconsideration of same-sex relations in the early modern period, and argues that early modern writers – rather than simply celebrating a classical friendship model based in dyadic exclusivity and a rejection of self-interest – sought to innovate on classical models for idealized friendship. This book redirects scholarly conversations regarding gender, sexuality, classical receptions, and the economic aspects of social relations in the early modern period. It points to new directions in the application of queer theory to Renaissance literature by examining group friendship as a celebrated social formation in the work of early modern writers from Shakespeare to Milton. This volume will be of interest to scholars of the early modern period in England, as well as to those interested in the intersections between literature and gender studies, economic history and the economic aspects of social relations, the classics and the classical tradition, and the history of sexuality.

Studies of Renaissance literature frequently frame marriage as signalling the resolution of narrative conflicts and the necessary end of comedies. This book proposes that we think beyond the all-pervasive figure of the couple, too often framed as the core unit of social relations. The author challenges these assumptions and suggests new frameworks within which to analyze literary depictions of idealized social relations. This volume will be of interest to scholars of the early modern period in England, and those interested in the intersections between literature and gender studies, economic history and the economic aspects of social relations, and the history of sexuality.

Queering the Renaissance offers a major reassessment of the field of Renaissance studies. Gathering essays by sixteen critics working within the perspective of gay and lesbian studies, this collection redraws the map of sexuality and gender studies in the Renaissance. Taken together, these essays move beyond limiting notions of identity politics by locating historically forms of same-sex desire that are not organized in terms of modern definitions of homosexual and heterosexual. The presence of contemporary history can be felt throughout the volume, beginning with an investigation of the uses of Renaissance precedents in the 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision Bowers v. Hardwick, to a piece on the foundations of 'our' national imaginary, and an afterword that addresses how identity politics has shaped the work of early modern historians. The volume examines canonical and noncanonical texts, including highly coded poems of the fifteenth-century Italian poet Burchiello, a tale from Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron, and Erasmus's letters to a young male acolyte. English texts provide a central focus, including works by Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon, Donne, Beaumont and Fletcher, Crashaw, and Dryden. Broad suveys of the complex terrains of friendship and sodomy are explored in one essay, while another offers a cross-cultural reading of the discursive sites of lesbian desire. Contributors. Alan Bray, Marcie Frank, Carla Freccero, Jonathan Goldberg, Janet Halley, Graham Hammill, Margaret Hunt, Donald N. Mager, Jeff Masten, Elizabeth Pittenger, Richard Rambuss, Alan K. Smith, Dorothy Stephens, Forrest Tyler Stevens, Valerie Traub, Michael Warner

Dealing with questions of the meaning of eroticism in Renaissance England and its separation from other affective relations, Queer Renaissance Historiography examines the distinctive arrangement of sexuality during this period, and the role that queer theory has played in our understanding of this arrangement. As such this book not only reflects on the practice of writing a queer history of Renaissance England, but also suggests new directions for this practice. Queer Renaissance Historiography collects original contributions from leading experts, participating in a range of critical conversations whilst prompting scholars and students alike to reconsider what we think we know about sex and sexuality in Renaissance England. Presenting ethical, political and critical analyses of Early Modern texts, this book sets the tone for future scholarship on Renaissance sexualities, making a timely intervention in theoretical and methodological debates.

The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England is the eagerly-awaited study by the feminist scholar who was among the first to address the issue of early modern female homoeroticism. Valerie Traub analyzes the representation of female-female love, desire and eroticism in a range of early modern discourses, including poetry, drama, visual arts, pornography and medicine. Contrary to the silence and invisibility typically ascribed to lesbianism in the Renaissance, Traub argues that the early modern period witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of representations of such desire. By means of sophisticated interpretations of a comprehensive set of texts, the book not only charts a crucial shift in representations of female homoeroticism over the course of the seventeenth century, but also offers a provocative genealogy of contemporary lesbianism. A contribution to the history of sexuality and to feminist and queer theory, the book addresses current theoretical preoccupations through the lens of historical inquiry.

Shakespeare and Queer Theory is an indispensable guide on the ongoing critical debates about queer method both within and beyond Shakespeare and early modern studies. Clearly elucidating the central ideas of the theory, the field's historical emergence from feminist and gay and lesbian studies within the academy, and political activism related to the AIDS crisis beyond it, it also illuminates current debates about historicism and embodiment. Through a series of original readings of texts including Othello, The Merchant of Venice, and Venus and Adonis, as well as film adaptations of early modern drama including Derek Jarman's The Tempest and Edward II, Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, and Julie Taymor's Titus, it illustrates the value of queer theory to Shakespeare scholarship, and the value of Shakespearean texts to queer theory.

What led Shakespeare to write his most cryptic poem, 'The Phoenix and Turtle'? Could the Phoenix represent Queen Elizabeth, on the verge of death as Shakespeare wrote? Is the Earl of Essex, recently executed for treason, the Turtledove lover of the Phoenix? Questions such as these dominate scholarship of both Shakespeare's poem and the book in which it first appeared: Robert Chester's enigmatic collection of verse, Love's Martyr (1601), where Shakespeare's allegory sits next to erotic love lyrics by Ben Jonson, George Chapman and John Marston, as well as work by the much lesser-known Chester. Don Rodrigues critiques and revises traditional computational attribution studies by integrating the insights of queer theory to a study of Love's Martyr. A book deeply engaged in current debates in computational literary studies, it is particularly attuned to questions of non-normativity, deviation and departures from style when assessing stylistic patterns. Gathering insights from decades of computational and traditional analyses, it presents, most radically, data that supports the once-outlandish theory that Shakespeare may have had a significant hand in editing works signed by Chester. At the same time, this book insists on the fundamentally collaborative nature of production in Love's Martyr. Developing a compelling account of how collaborative textual production could work among early modern writers, Shakespeare's Queer Analytics is a much-needed methodological intervention in computational attribution studies. It articulates what Rodrigues describes as 'queer analytics': an approach to literary analysis that joins the non-normative close reading of queer theory to the distant attention of computational literary studies – highlighting patterns that traditional readings often overlook or ignore.

Penelope Anderson's original study changes our understanding both of the masculine Renaissance friendship tradition and of the private forms of women's friendship of the eighteenth century and after. It uncovers the latent threat of betrayal lurking within politicized classical and humanist friendship, showing its surprising resilience as a model for political obligation undone and remade. Incorporating authors from Cicero to Abraham Cowley and Margaret Cavendish to Mary Astell, the book focuses on two extraordinary women writers, the royalist Katherine Philips and the republican Lucy Hutchinson. And it explores the ways in which they appropriate the friendship tradition in order to address problems of conflicting allegiances in the English Civil Wars and Restoration. As Penelope Anderson suggests, their writings on friendship provide a new account of women's relation to public life, organized through textual exchange rather than bodily reproduction.

Beginning with the beguiling queerness of the Renaissance letter Q, Jeffrey Masten's stylishly written and extensively illustrated Queer Philologies demonstrates the intimate relation between the history of sexuality and the history of the language.

After Queer Studies centers the literature and critical practices that instigated queer studies and charts trajectories for its further evolution.