Richard Barnfield and queer Classicism in Elizabethan England Massimiliano Riviera

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Riviera, Massimiliano, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Barnfield, Richard, 1574-1627.

Barnfield, Richard.

Homosexuality and literature--England--History--17th century.

Homosexuality and literature.

Pastoral poetry, English--History and criticism.

Pastoral poetry, English.

Homosexuality and literature--History.

England.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

illustration

Place of Publication:

Oxford University Press, 2026.

Oxford Oxford University Press [2026]

Summary:

'Richard Barnfield and Queer Classicism in Elizabethan England' offers a comprehensive reappraisal of the work of Richard Barnfield, the Elizabethan writer who authored homoerotic and pastoral poetry during the last decade of the sixteenth century. While Barnfield has often been dismissed as an imitative poet, this book sheds new light on Barnfield's imaginative engagement with classical and contemporary texts, presenting him as a subtly subversive poet who consistently inhabits poetical models, genres, and tropes only to disrupt them from within

Contents:

Cover

Richard Barnfield and Queer Classicism in Elizabethan England

Copyright

Acknowledgements

Contents

List of Illustrations

A Note on the Text

Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Bazille, Barnfield, and the Art of Allusion

2. A Staffordshire Lad: Richard Barnfield, his Life and Works

3. 'Living Fame No Fortune Can Confound': Barnfield's Afterlife

4. Birds of a Feather: Barnfield and Imitatio

5. Barnfield's Poesy: Toward a Homoerotics of Allusion

1: The Affectionate Shepheard and the Homoerotics of allusion

1. Reading Homoerotically: Barnfield in the Fields of Desire

2. Unshadowing the Conceit: Virgil's 'Second Eglogue of Alexis' between Translation and Imitatio

3. Tracing a Canon: Barnfield's Homoerotic Literary Community

4. Marlowe's Ghost and the Homoerotics of allusion

2: Sex and the Cittie: Cynthia, the Trojan Cycle, and Barnfield's Queenship

1. 'The Monument of Great Antiquitie': Barnfield's Versatile Troy

2. What's in a Name? Elizabeth's Unstable Identity in 'Cynthia'

3. Wounded by Desire: Achilles' Spear and the Erotic Battlefield

4. False Heroes, Untruthful Seers, and the Limits of Translatio Imperii : The Legend of Cassandra

3: Orpheus, His Journey to Hell and the Limits of Exemplarity

1. Reassessing Orpheus: The Sparagmos of a Myth

2. Avoiding Hades: Orphic Narratives in Elizabethan Literature

3. Orpheus's 'Sad Teares' and the Rhetoric of Pathos

4. 'In the Fieldes with Orpheus': Orphic Teachings and the Spectre of Sodomy

4 : 'Ten Thousand Teares Ile Shead': Mourning and Patronage in The Complaint of Poetrie

1. Returning to the Fields: The Complaint of Poetrie and Pastoral Elegy

2. The Parcae's Thread: Literary Interweaving in the Pastoral Elegy

3. 'Hoping to Find you . . . Friendly': Friendship and Patronage at the Inns of Court

Conclusion

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on March 2, 2026)

Other Format:

Print version :

ISBN:

9780198995098

0198995091

OCLC:

1574925482

Publisher Number:

CIPO000359224

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license