Sex Before Sex : Figuring the Act in Early Modern England

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bromley, James M.

Contributor:

Stockton, Will, Contributor.

Stockton, Will, Editor.

Bromley, James M., Contributor.

Bromley, James M., Editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--History and criticism--Early modern, 1500-1700--England.

English literature.

Sex--History--Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600.

Sex.

Sex in literature--History and criticism.

Sex in literature.

Intimacy (Psychology) in literature.

English drama.

Behavior.

Literature.

History, Modern 1601-.

History, Early Modern 1451-1600.

Behavior and Behavior Mechanisms.

Humanities.

History.

History, 16th Century.

Sexual Behavior.

History, 17th Century.

Literature, Modern.

Medical Subjects:

Behavior.

Literature.

History, Modern 1601-.

History, Early Modern 1451-1600.

Behavior and Behavior Mechanisms.

Humanities.

History.

History, 16th Century.

Sexual Behavior.

History, 17th Century.

Literature, Modern.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (332 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

[Place of publication not identified] University of Minnesota Press 2013

Language Note:

English

Summary:

What is sex exactly? Does everyone agree on a definition? And does that definition hold when considering literary production in other times and places? "Sex before Sex" makes clear that we cannot simply transfer our contemporary notions of what constitutes a sex act into the past and expect them to be true for the people who were then reading literature and watching plays. The contributors confront how our current critical assumptions about definitions of sex restrict our understanding of representations of sexuality in early modern England. Drawing attention to overlooked forms of sexual activity in early modern culture, from anilingus and interspecies sex to OC chin-chuckingOCO and convivial drinking, "Sex before Sex" offers a multifaceted view of what sex looked like before the term entered history. Through incisive interpretations of a wide range of literary texts, including "Romeo and Juliet, The Comedy of Errors, Paradise Lost," the figure of Lucretia, and pornographic poetry, this collection queries what might constitute sex in the absence of a widely accepted definition and how a historicized concept of sex affects the kinds of arguments that can be made about early modern sexualities. Contributors: Holly Dugan, George Washington U; Will Fisher, CUNYOCoLehman College; Stephen Guy-Bray, U of British Columbia; Melissa J. Jones, Eastern Michigan U; Thomas H. Luxon, Dartmouth College; Nicholas F. Radel, Furman U; Kathryn Schwarz, Vanderbilt U; Christine Varnado, U of BuffaloOCoSUNY.

Contents:

Cover

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Figuring Early Modern Sex

Chapter 1: "Invisible Sex!": What Looks Like the Act in Early Modern Drama?

Chapter 2: Death and Theory: Or, the Problem of Counterfactual Sex

Chapter 3: Spectacular Impotence: Or, Things That Hardly Ever Happen in the Critical History of Pornography

Chapter 4: "Unmanly Passion": Sodomitical Self-Fashioning in John Ford's The Lover's Melancholy and Perkin Warbeck

Chapter 5: The Erotics of Chin Chucking in Seventeenth-Century England

Chapter 6: Rimming the Renaissance

Chapter 7: Animal, Vegetable, Sexual: Metaphor in John Donne's "Sappho to Philaenis" and Andrew Marvell's "The Garden

Chapter 8: Aping Rape: Animal Ravishment and Sexual Knowledge in Early Modern England

Chapter 9: The Seduction of Milton's Lady: Rape, Psychoanalysis, and the Erotics of Consumption in Comus

Chapter 10: "How Human Life Began": Sexual Reproduction in Book 8 of Paradise Lost

Afterword

Contributors

Index

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

Z.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

ISBN:

1-4529-3947-0