Sodometries: Renaissance Texts, Modern Sexualities - Hardcover

Goldberg Arts And Sciences Distinguished Professor Emeritus Of English, Sir William Osler Professor Of English Literature Jonathan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804720509 ISBN 13: 9780804720502

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 1992

Synopsis

This is a book about representations of sodomy. While most of the texts it considers are literary - works by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser and others - it is framed by more recent political considerations. The book takes as axiomatic that Foucault's description of sodomy as 'that utterly confused category' which he assigned to historic regimes before the advent of sexuality, applies not only to Renaissance texts but to modern situations as well. The analyses of literary texts engage the most advanced work in contemporary literary criticism (that done by feminist and New Historicist critics) and propose a gay studies perspective that necessarily complicates and enriches the discussions of gender and history. Goldberg brings rigorous scholarship to bear on a powerful contemporary polemic about the ways in which a past that never was is used to justify the repression of gay sexuality today.

About this title

From the Back Cover

At the very cutting edge of its field, an indispensable guide to the sexuality of the world that preceded our own Alan J. M. Bray
Sodometries is a stunning book: the complexity of its intelligence and the beauty of its stylistic accomplishments take one s breath away. Journal of the History of Sexuality"

Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804720509
• ISBN 13: 9780804720502
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 316