Table of Contents

Contents: Preface; Part I: Intentionality: Closeted Homosexual Writing: Chapter 1: Closeted writing before 'the closet'; Chapter 2: 'Philips-Lover' and the abominable Madame de Murat; Chapter 3: The closeting of closeting: Cleland, Smollett, sodomy, and the critics. Part II: Intentionality: Closeted Homophobic Writing: Chapter 4: Pornographic homophobia: L'Academie des dames and the deconstructing lesbian; Chapter 5: 'For how can they be guilty?': the sophisticated homophobia of Manley's New Atalantis. Part III: Continuity: Chapter 6: Metamorphosis and homosexuality I: Ovid's 'Iphis and Ianthe' and related tales; Chapter 7: Metamorphosis and homosexuality II: Iphis, Ianthe, and others on the early modern stage. Postscript; Bibliography; Index.

About the Author

David M. Robinson teaches English Literature and Lesbian & Gay Studies at the University of Arizona, USA.

Reviews

"Robinson argues bravely for the validity of ’continuist’ approaches, re-engaging the once discredited notion of authorial intention, along with historical contextualisation and close reading, to illuminate poetry, fiction and drama from his clustered classical, Early Modern and eighteenth-century periods." Sophie Tomlinson, University of Auckland"Robinson is a worthy successor to Sedgwick in his dedication to reparative rather than paranoid readings: he seeks to repair the rendering of early modern same-sex sexual desire as unknowable and insignificant and he brings together ‘both male and female homosexuality, and especially their interrelation in particular texts, as a sign of their interrelation in the cultural imagination of particular times and places’ (p. xi). Robinson has written a book that will be difficult to ignore by those who write on same-sex desire in this period: his book should prove to be either a launch pad or a stumbling block for those who follow in his wake." Katherine O’Donnell, University College Dublin, Ireland