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Series Q
Queering the Renaissance
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
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
424 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
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May 26, 2026extremely banger collection 👍
read in full:
valerie traub’s “The (In)Significance of ‘Lesbian’ Desire in Early Modern England”--explores visions of desire between women, primarily 1. the idea of the "tribade" crossdresser (woman using a strap; this was considered very threatening) and 2. the idea of the more feminine woman who was still available for reproductive labor but maybe also loved women (see Hermia-and-Helena-type relationships, twinned cherries, etc). really good paper and the reason i picked this book up :3
“These women’s desires are untenable not, as is the case with transvestism, tribadism, or sodomy, because they are viewed as implicitly imitative and hence monstrous, but because they are essentially nonreproductive […] It is only when women’s erotic relations with one another threaten exclusivity, and thus endanger their reproductive ‘performance,’ that cultural injunctions are levied against them.” (78)
jonathan goldberg’s “Romeo and Juliet’s Open Rs”--talking about how people want romeo and juliet to be a pure image of heterosexual love isolated from society, but You Cannot Escape That We Live In A Society and there's gender wiggliness going on. like, rosaline is playing the same role in the text as the young man in the sonnets! juliet is likened to the sun rather than the moon Diana, which would make her apollo!
“…the coupling of Romeo and Juliet is not a unique moment of heterosexual perfection and privacy but part of a series whose substitutions do not respect either the uniqueness of individuals or the boundaries of gender difference” (222)
other stuff
- lots in here about the blurring line between healthy male friendship (which could include kissing and sharing beds, for emotional reasons but also reasons of political/social alliance) and The Threat Of Sodomy, which could mean a lot of different things and was also linked to treason/heathenry/etc (Alan Bray)
- interesting bit in the afterward about how this has changed in the modern day-- "the exiling of the overtly homoerotic from the power center of society out to more liminal zones" (Margaret Hunt)
- "when [Britomart] and Paridell crash like bump-cars in book 3" (Dorothy Stephens on Amoret & Britomart yuri)
- “Expressing sheer impatience with divine measures to date, Donne metaphorically aligns the extremity of his longing for redemption and spiritual satisfaction with the desire to be taken and ravished by God in what amounts to a kind of trinitarian gang-bang. It isn’t enough for him to be ravished, raped by Jesus alone, that is; Donne aggressively demands that the whole Godhead be enlisted in the task: ‘Batter my heart, three-personed God.’” (Richard Rambuss on erotic religious art, emphasis mine)
- one of the puritans quoted in michael warner’s paper on “New English Sodom” spelled “scourge” (as in, and judgment) as Squorge. a heavye Squorge and Judgment. i'm always saying this
read in full:
valerie traub’s “The (In)Significance of ‘Lesbian’ Desire in Early Modern England”--explores visions of desire between women, primarily 1. the idea of the "tribade" crossdresser (woman using a strap; this was considered very threatening) and 2. the idea of the more feminine woman who was still available for reproductive labor but maybe also loved women (see Hermia-and-Helena-type relationships, twinned cherries, etc). really good paper and the reason i picked this book up :3
“These women’s desires are untenable not, as is the case with transvestism, tribadism, or sodomy, because they are viewed as implicitly imitative and hence monstrous, but because they are essentially nonreproductive […] It is only when women’s erotic relations with one another threaten exclusivity, and thus endanger their reproductive ‘performance,’ that cultural injunctions are levied against them.” (78)
jonathan goldberg’s “Romeo and Juliet’s Open Rs”--talking about how people want romeo and juliet to be a pure image of heterosexual love isolated from society, but You Cannot Escape That We Live In A Society and there's gender wiggliness going on. like, rosaline is playing the same role in the text as the young man in the sonnets! juliet is likened to the sun rather than the moon Diana, which would make her apollo!
“…the coupling of Romeo and Juliet is not a unique moment of heterosexual perfection and privacy but part of a series whose substitutions do not respect either the uniqueness of individuals or the boundaries of gender difference” (222)
other stuff
- lots in here about the blurring line between healthy male friendship (which could include kissing and sharing beds, for emotional reasons but also reasons of political/social alliance) and The Threat Of Sodomy, which could mean a lot of different things and was also linked to treason/heathenry/etc (Alan Bray)
- interesting bit in the afterward about how this has changed in the modern day-- "the exiling of the overtly homoerotic from the power center of society out to more liminal zones" (Margaret Hunt)
- "when [Britomart] and Paridell crash like bump-cars in book 3" (Dorothy Stephens on Amoret & Britomart yuri)
- “Expressing sheer impatience with divine measures to date, Donne metaphorically aligns the extremity of his longing for redemption and spiritual satisfaction with the desire to be taken and ravished by God in what amounts to a kind of trinitarian gang-bang. It isn’t enough for him to be ravished, raped by Jesus alone, that is; Donne aggressively demands that the whole Godhead be enlisted in the task: ‘Batter my heart, three-personed God.’” (Richard Rambuss on erotic religious art, emphasis mine)
- one of the puritans quoted in michael warner’s paper on “New English Sodom” spelled “scourge” (as in, and judgment) as Squorge. a heavye Squorge and Judgment. i'm always saying this
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July 5, 2019Good book
January 22, 2026
Jonathan Goldberg’s Queering the Renaissance occupies a seminal, perhaps even radical, place in queer literary and historical studies, particularly for readers interested in how same-sex love and desire, along with gender, functioned before the emergence of modern sexual identities. Goldberg brings together essays by sixteen scholars in gay and lesbian studies, including Alan Bray, Valerie Traub, and Michael Warner, but rather than offering a celebratory recovery of “gay people” from the past, this work deliberately unsettles that expectation.
For a gay male reader, like myself, this approach can feel both thought-provoking and emotionally disorienting, as the book insists that the very categories through which we understand ourselves today did not exist in the Renaissance. What emerges is not a history of gay men and women as such, but a sustained challenge to how desire, masculinity, femininity, and intimacy between men and between women have been traditionally understood.
The collection challenges how one thinks about desire, identity, and historical continuity. (And yes, it’s equally important for non-LGBTQ+ individuals to engage in this as well.) Rather than asking readers to find themselves in the past, it asks them to examine and question the assumptions that shape that desire for recognition.
Read my full review over on www.ryanlawrenceauthor.ca
For a gay male reader, like myself, this approach can feel both thought-provoking and emotionally disorienting, as the book insists that the very categories through which we understand ourselves today did not exist in the Renaissance. What emerges is not a history of gay men and women as such, but a sustained challenge to how desire, masculinity, femininity, and intimacy between men and between women have been traditionally understood.
The collection challenges how one thinks about desire, identity, and historical continuity. (And yes, it’s equally important for non-LGBTQ+ individuals to engage in this as well.) Rather than asking readers to find themselves in the past, it asks them to examine and question the assumptions that shape that desire for recognition.
Read my full review over on www.ryanlawrenceauthor.ca
February 19, 2008
Warner's essay ("New English Sodom") was useful.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews