Sexual Shakespeare: Forgery, Authorship, Portraiture
Keevak, Michael
ISBN 10: 0814329756 ISBN 13: 9780814329757
Published by Wayne State University Press, 2001
Used
Paperback
From
Midtown Scholar Bookstore, Harrisburg, PA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
AbeBooks Seller since 7 June 2002
This specific item is no longer available.
About this Item
Description:
crisp clean w/light shelfwear/edgewear - may have remainder mark Standard-sized. Seller Inventory # 0814329756-01
Synopsis:
Shakespeare's sexuality has always been an ambiguous concept, despite the pleasant fictions of "Shakespeare in Love". Now Michael Keevak examines such sources as anecdotes, imitations, forgeries, spurious works and portraits to show that this ambiguity has a long and twisted history. "Sexual Shakespeare" argues that Shakespeare's sexuality has always presented a problem to readers, who thus have a tendency to desexualize him. Keevak casts his net widely among Shakespeareana to reconsider a wealth of intriguing evidence, including the sexuality of the man himself as discerned through such contradictory clues as his reputation as a womanizer and his allegedly homosexual sonnets; the Shakespearean forgeries of William Henry Ireland; and the question of whether restoration dramatist William Davenant was Shakespeare's illegitimate son. He also evaluates the questions of Shakespeare's sexuality that are at the heart of controversies over authorship and visual representations of the bard's face. Because so little reliable information is available about Shakespeare, Keevak suggests that the very idea of his sexuality, much like his personal reputation, should remain as open and unfixed as possible - that Shakespeare and his contemporaries are not easily reducible to a sexuality of any kind. His book offers a new way of understanding our desire to uncover "the absent sodomite" in the early modern period and makes a unique contribution to both queer theory and Renaissance studies.
About the Author: Michael Keevak is an associate professor of foreign languages and literature at National Taiwan University.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Bibliographic Details
Title: Sexual Shakespeare: Forgery, Authorship, ...
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Publication Date: 2001
Binding: Paperback
Condition: Very Good