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Prose Fiction and Early Modern Sexuality, 1570-1640 brings together twelve new essays which situate the arguments about the multiple constructions of sexualities in prose fiction within contemporary critical debates about the body, gender, desire, print culture, postcoloniality, and cultural geography. Looking at Sidney's Arcadia , Wroth's Urania , Lyly's Euphues ; fictions by Gascoigne, Riche, Parry, and Brathwaite; as well as Hellenic romances, rogue fictions, and novelle, the essays expand and challenge current critical arguments about the gendering of labour, female eroticism, queer masculinity, sodomy, male friendship, cross-dressing, heteroeroticism, incest, and the gendering of poetic creativity.
List of contents
Introduction: Prose Fiction and Early Modern Sexualities in England, 1570-1640; C.C.Relihan & G.V.Stanivukovic PART I: GENDER, GENRE, AND SEXUALITY Love, Chastity and Woman's Erotic Power: Greek Romances in Elizabethan and Jacobean Context; D.C.Greenhalgh 'Dissordinate Desire' and the Construction of Geographic Otherness in the Early Modern Novella; C.C.Relihan Passion and Reason in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia; L.Hopkins The Thigh and the Sword: Gender, Genre, and Sexy Dressing in Sidney's New Arcadia; S.Mentz Prisoners of Love: Crosscultural and Supernatural Desires in Lady Mary Wroth's Urania; S.T.Cavanagh PART II: QUEER FICTIONS Same Difference: Homo and Allo in Lyly's Euphues; S.Guy-Bray Rogue-Sirens: Urban Seductions and the Collapse of Amicitia; M.Holmes Gelding Gascoigne; A.Stewart 'Knights in Armes': The Homoerotics of the English Renaissance Prose Romances; G.V.Stanivukovic PART III: TEXTUALITY AND DESIRE Emasculating Romance: Historical Fiction in the Protectorate; E.Sauer Sidney, Gascoigne and the 'Bastard Poets'; R.W.Maslen Unfolding the Shepherdess: A Revision of Pastoral; L.H.Newcomb Afterword
About the author
CONSTANCE C. RELIHAN is Hargis Professor of English at Auburn University, Alabama, USA.
GORAN V. STANIVUKOVIC is Associate Professor of English at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Summary
Prose Fiction and Early Modern Sexuality, 1570-1640 brings together twelve new essays which situate the arguments about the multiple constructions of sexualities in prose fiction within contemporary critical debates about the body, gender, desire, print culture, postcoloniality, and cultural geography. Looking at Sidney's Arcadia , Wroth's Urania , Lyly's Euphues ; fictions by Gascoigne, Riche, Parry, and Brathwaite; as well as Hellenic romances, rogue fictions, and novelle, the essays expand and challenge current critical arguments about the gendering of labour, female eroticism, queer masculinity, sodomy, male friendship, cross-dressing, heteroeroticism, incest, and the gendering of poetic creativity.
Additional text
"From popular rogue pamphlets and collections of novelle to courtly romances like Philip Sidney's Arcadia and Mary Wroth's Urania, English Renaissance prose fiction enticed male and female readers alike with fantastic, exotic, sometimes violent, tales of love and sexual passion. Rescuing these texts from critical neglect, this volume richly demonstrates the role that prose fiction played in the fashioning and circulation of sexual discourses during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It gathers historically and theoretically informed essays that shrewdly analyze the narrative and ideological strategies employed by prose fiction writers to represent the erotic plurality of English Renaissance literature and culture. In the process, this collection offers exciting new perspectives not only on sexuality (including, but not limited to, its 'hetero' and 'homo' varieties), but also on racial difference, religious conflict, market economics, male friendship, female chastity, and gender performance in the early modern period." - Mario DiGangi, Associate Professor of English, Lehman College and The Graduate Center, CUNY
"Prose Fiction and Early Modern Sexualities in England, 1570-1640, offers a significant contribution to early modern scholarship and recent work on the history of sexuality. By foregrounding the formal, historical and political aspects of prose fiction, the essays work collectively to complicate assumptions about the 'normative' sexual subject and expand the field of erotic representation for historians of literature, gender and sexuality. This important book will be of interest to scholars and students of early modern literature and culture, and to all interested in archival and theoretical resources available for advancing the history of sexuality." - Carla Mazzio, University of Chicago
Report
"From popular rogue pamphlets and collections of novelle to courtly romances like Philip Sidney's Arcadia and Mary Wroth's Urania, English Renaissance prose fiction enticed male and female readers alike with fantastic, exotic, sometimes violent, tales of love and sexual passion. Rescuing these texts from critical neglect, this volume richly demonstrates the role that prose fiction played in the fashioning and circulation of sexual discourses during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It gathers historically and theoretically informed essays that shrewdly analyze the narrative and ideological strategies employed by prose fiction writers to represent the erotic plurality of English Renaissance literature and culture. In the process, this collection offers exciting new perspectives not only on sexuality (including, but not limited to, its 'hetero' and 'homo' varieties), but also on racial difference, religious conflict, market economics, male friendship, female chastity, and gender performance in the early modern period." - Mario DiGangi, Associate Professor of English, Lehman College and The Graduate Center, CUNY
"Prose Fiction and Early Modern Sexualities in England, 1570-1640, offers a significant contribution to early modern scholarship and recent work on the history of sexuality. By foregrounding the formal, historical and political aspects of prose fiction, the essays work collectively to complicate assumptions about the 'normative' sexual subject and expand the field of erotic representation for historians of literature, gender and sexuality. This important book will be of interest to scholars and students of early modern literature and culture, and to all interested in archival and theoretical resources available for advancing the history of sexuality." - Carla Mazzio, University of Chicago
