In the most comprehensive study yet of homosexuality in the English Renaissance, Bruce R. Smith examines and rejects the assessments of homosexual acts in moral philosophy, laws, and medical books in favor of a poetics of homosexual desire. Smith isolates six different "myths" from classical literature and discusses each in relation to a particular Renaissance literary genre and to a particular part of the social structure of early modern England. Smith’s new Preface places his work in the context of the continuing controversies in gay, lesbian, and bisexual studies.

"The best single analysis of the homoerotic element in Renaissance English literature."—Keith Thomas, New York Review of Books

CONTENTS:

List of Illustrations
Preface to the Paperback Edition
Preface
1. Sexuality and the Play of Imagination
2. Combatants and Comrades
3. The Passionate Shepherd
4. The Shipwrecked Youth
5. Knights in Shifts
6. Master and Minion
7. The Secret Sharer
Notes
Index

AUTHOR:

Bruce R. Smith is the College Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of, most recently, Shakespeare and Masculinity and The Acoustic World of Early Modern England, the latter published by the University of Chicago Press.