Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-sjtt6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-07T03:50:19.569Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Preface

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2009

Mario DiGangi
Affiliation:
Indiana University
Get access

Summary

For all its importance as a legal and ideological category used to define and police sexual behavior in the Renaissance, “sodomy” fails to describe a variety of same-sex relations that were central to the social organization and literary culture of early modern England. This book provides a sustained demonstration of why this should be so, and offers the concept of “homoeroticism” as an alternative foundation for the literary and historical analysis of early modern sexuality.

Lesbian and gay scholarship has shown that in the early modern period “sodomy” was neither a neutral description of a sexual act nor a synonym for homoerotic relations generally, but a political category deployed to stigmatize and control a multitude of social disorders. “Sodomy” identified the apparent violation of dominant religious, gender, economic, or social codes in conjunction with sexual transgressions often but not exclusively involving homoerotic intimacy. While recent scholarship has superbly exposed the ideological contradictions and political operations of sodomy discourses, it has not fully explored the implications of these findings for the study of other forms of Renaissance homoeroticism. The complex interplay between sodomitical and nonsodomitical forms of homoeroticism deserves a more detailed and nuanced account than it has heretofore received. In the interests of advancing a materialist understanding of early modern sexuality and society, this book will examine the full range of sodomitical and nonsodomitical homoerotic relations represented in English drama from about 1590 to 1620.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Preface
  • Mario DiGangi, Indiana University
  • Book: The Homoerotics of Early Modern Drama
  • Online publication: 02 December 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511585319.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Preface
  • Mario DiGangi, Indiana University
  • Book: The Homoerotics of Early Modern Drama
  • Online publication: 02 December 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511585319.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Preface
  • Mario DiGangi, Indiana University
  • Book: The Homoerotics of Early Modern Drama
  • Online publication: 02 December 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511585319.001
Available formats
×