SeminENGL 78100. Mario DiGangi and William Fisher. Renaissance Sex. Tuesdays 11:45AM-1:45PM. 2/4 credits. [Class Number 64633]
This seminar will explore the repertoire of scholarly methods that have been used for understanding sex and sexuality in early modern literature, with an eye to current debates and future directions in the field. We will consider how different theoretical and historical approaches have produced varying accounts of sex as an object of inquiry; we will engage various reading strategies for elucidating sexual meaning in literary and non-literary texts; and we will reflect critically on questions of evidence, language, genre, theatricality, and periodization.
The following kinds of questions will guide our discussions: What are the consequences of emphasizing historical alterity or historical continuity in the study of sex? Are concepts such as sexual identity, subjectivity, or community useful in analyzing early modern modes of eroticism? How was sex itself depicted? Which acts feature regularly in texts from the period, and which appear to have been unknown? How were sex acts and erotic discourses structured by social categories, especially race and national identity, but also categories such as gender and class? How were phenomena like consent and sexual violence conceptualized? How might the field ultimately move beyond familiar sexual paradigms and taxonomies (i.e., homoeroticism/heteroeroticism) and access alternative forms of erotic knowledge, practice, and relationality in early modern culture? How do particular textual and performative elements (i.e., puns, soliloquies, gestures, costumes, voices, metatheatrical moments, offstage actions) convey or confound sexual meaning?
Readings:
In addressing these questions, we will be examining a wide range of primary materials, from plays and poetry to court cases and pornography. First, we will be reading a number of canonical literary texts such as Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis and Othello, Marlowe’s Edward II, Barnfield’s The Affectionate Shepherd, Donne’s “Sappho to Philaenis” and the poems of Katherine Philips and Aphra Behn. In addition, we will be exploring “pornographic” texts like Rochester’s Sodom, The School of Venus, Nashe’s Choise of Valentines and other poems featuring dildos like Seignor Dildo’s Adventures in Britain. Finally, we will study an array of non-literary texts including medical treatises (such as John Henry Meibom’s The Use of Flogging in Venereal Affairs and Giles Jacob’s Treatise of Hermaphrodites) and court cases (such as the infamous Castlehaven trial).