Prose Fiction and Early Modern Sexualities in England, 1570–1640

Prose Fiction and Early Modern Sexuality, 1570-1640 brings together twelve new essays which situate the arguments about the multiple constructions of sexualities in prose fiction within contemporary critical debates about the body, gender, desire, print culture, postcoloniality, and cultural geography. Looking at Sidney's Arcadia , Wroth's Urania , Lyly's Euphues ; fictions by Gascoigne, Riche, Parry, and Brathwaite; as well as Hellenic romances, rogue fictions, and novelle, the essays expand and challenge current critical arguments about the gendering of labour, female eroticism, queer masculinity, sodomy, male friendship, cross-dressing, heteroeroticism, incest, and the gendering of poetic creativity. Front Matter....Pages i-xv Introduction: Prose Fiction and Early Modern Sexualities in England, 1570–1640....Pages 1-12 Front Matter....Pages 13-13 Love, Chastity, and Woman’s Erotic Power: Greek Romance in Elizabethan and Jacobean Contexts....Pages 15-42 “Dissordinate Desire” and the Construction of Geographic Otherness in the Early Modern Novella....Pages 43-59 Passion and Reason in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia ....Pages 61-75 The Thigh and the Sword: Gender, Genre, and Sexy Dressing in Sidney’s New Arcadia ....Pages 77-91 Prisoners of Love: Cross-Cultural and Supernatural Desires in Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania ....Pages 93-110 Front Matter....Pages 111-111 Same Difference: Homo and Allo in Lyly’s Euphues....Pages 113-127 Rogue-Sirens: Urban Seduction and the Collapse of Amicitia ....Pages 129-146 Gelding Gascoigne....Pages 147-169 “Knights in Armes”: The Homoerotics of the English Renaissance Prose Romances....Pages 171-192 Front Matter....Pages 193-193 Emasculating Romance: Historical Fiction in the Protectorate....Pages 195-213 Sidney, Gascoigne, and the “Bastard Poets”....Pages 215-233 Unfolding the Shepherdess: A Revision of Pastoral....Pages 235-255 Afterword....Pages 257-258 Back Matter....Pages 259-287