Stephen Guy-Bray argues that early modern authors used renditions of Theocritan and Virgilian pastoral, as well as epic poetry, for the exploration and the allusive presentation of homoerotic and homosocial themes.
This book looks at how Renaissance poets ended their poetic lines. It considers a range of strategies and argues that line endings are crucial to our understanding of the poems. I'll begin with an introduction summarizing the work that has already been done in this area and demonstrating my own method. The main part of the book will be divided into three chapters: one on rhyme; one on enjambment; and one on the sestina. These are the most significant kinds of line endings used by English Renaissance poets. The book ends with a brief afterword, in which I'll summarize my findings and sketch out some new areas for research.
In this engaging and accessible guidebook, Stephen Guy-Bray uses queer theory to argue that in many of Shakespeare’s works representation itself becomes queer. Shakespeare often uses representation, not just as a lens through which to tell a story, but as a textual tool in itself. Shakespeare and Queer Representation includes a thorough introduction that discusses how we can define queer representation, with each chapter developing these theories to examine works that span the entire career of Shakespeare, including his sonnets, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, King John, Macbeth, and Cymbeline. The book highlights the extent to which Shakespeare’s works can be seen to anticipate, and even to extend, many of the insights of the latest developments in queer theory. This thought-provoking and evocative book is an essential guide for students studying Shakespeare and Renaissance literature, gender studies, and queer literary theory.
Dealing with questions of the meaning of eroticism in Renaissance England and its separation from other affective relations, Queer Renaissance Historiography examines the distinctive arrangement of sexuality during this period, and the role that queer theory has played in our understanding of this arrangement. As such this book not only reflects on the practice of writing a queer history of Renaissance England, but also suggests new directions for this practice. Queer Renaissance Historiography collects original contributions from leading experts, participating in a range of critical conversations whilst prompting scholars and students alike to reconsider what we think we know about sex and sexuality in Renaissance England. Presenting ethical, political and critical analyses of Early Modern texts, this book sets the tone for future scholarship on Renaissance sexualities, making a timely intervention in theoretical and methodological debates.
Traditional literary criticism once treated Thomas Nashe as an Elizabethan oddity, difficult to understand or value. He was described as an unrestrained stylist, venomous polemicist, unreliable source, and closet pornographer. But today this flamboyant writer sits at the center of many trends in early modern scholarship. Nashe’s varied output fuels efforts to reconsider print culture and the history of the book, histories of sexuality and pornography, urban culture, the changing nature of patronage, the relationship between theater and print, and evolving definitions of literary authorship and 'literature' as such. This collection brings together a dozen scholars of Elizabethan literature to characterize the current state of Nashe scholarship and shape its emerging future. The Age of Thomas Nashe demonstrates how the works of a restless, improvident, ambitious young writer, driven by radical invention and a desperate search for literary order, can restructure critical thinking about this familiar era. These essays move beyond individual and generic conceptions of authorship to show how Nashe’s career unveils the changing imperatives of literary production in late sixteenth-century England. Thomas Nashe becomes both a marker of the historical milieu of his time and a symbolic pointer gesturing towards emerging features of modern authorship.
Stephen Guy-Bray argues that early modern authors used renditions of Theocritan and Virgilian pastoral, as well as epic poetry, for the exploration and the allusive presentation of homoerotic and homosocial themes.
The current critical tendency in the study of Renaissance literature is to regard the relationship between a poet and his predecessor as either familial or antagonistic. Stephen Guy-Bray argues that neither of these models can be applied to all poetic relationships and that, in fact, the romantic and even sexual nature of some relationships must be considered. Loving in Verse examines how three poets present their relationship to their most important predecessors, beginning with Dante's use of Virgil and Statius in the Divine Comedy, moving on to Spenser's use of medieval English poets in theFaerie Queene, and finally addressing Hart Crane's use of Whitman in The Bridge. In each case, Guy-Bray shows how the younger poet presents himself and the older poet as part of a male couple. He goes on to demonstrate how male couples are, in fact, found throughout these poems, and while some are indeed familial or hostile, many are romantic or sexual. Using concepts from queer theory and close readings of images and allusions in these texts, Loving in Verse demonstrates the importance of homoeroticism to an examination of poetic influence. A discussion of the theories of poetic influence from four twentieth-century writers (T.S. Eliot, Harold Bloom, Roland Barthes, and Frank O'Hara) concludes Guy-Bray's analysis.
In this engaging and accessible guidebook, Stephen Guy-Bray uses queer theory to argue that in many of Shakespeare’s works representation itself becomes queer. Shakespeare often uses representation, not just as a lens through which to tell a story, but as a textual tool in itself. Shakespeare and Queer Representation includes a thorough introduction that discusses how we can define queer representation, with each chapter developing these theories to examine works that span the entire career of Shakespeare, including his sonnets, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, King John, Macbeth, and Cymbeline. The book highlights the extent to which Shakespeare’s works can be seen to anticipate, and even to extend, many of the insights of the latest developments in queer theory. This thought-provoking and evocative book is an essential guide for students studying Shakespeare and Renaissance literature, gender studies, and queer literary theory.
The current critical tendency in the study of Renaissance literature is to regard the relationship between a poet and his predecessor as either familial or antagonistic. Stephen Guy-Bray argues that neither of these models can be applied to all poetic relationships and that, in fact, the romantic and even sexual nature of some relationships must be considered. Loving in Verse examines how three poets present their relationship to their most important predecessors, beginning with Dante's use of Virgil and Statius in the Divine Comedy, moving on to Spenser's use of medieval English poets in theFaerie Queene, and finally addressing Hart Crane's use of Whitman in The Bridge. In each case, Guy-Bray shows how the younger poet presents himself and the older poet as part of a male couple. He goes on to demonstrate how male couples are, in fact, found throughout these poems, and while some are indeed familial or hostile, many are romantic or sexual. Using concepts from queer theory and close readings of images and allusions in these texts, Loving in Verse demonstrates the importance of homoeroticism to an examination of poetic influence. A discussion of the theories of poetic influence from four twentieth-century writers (T.S. Eliot, Harold Bloom, Roland Barthes, and Frank O'Hara) concludes Guy-Bray's analysis.
An introduction to Shakespeare's I Henry IV - introducing its critical and performance history, current critical landscape and new directions in research on the play.
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