Description
Book SynopsisOffers discussions of the ways the 'inner life' is depicted in the Renaissance and the ways it is shown to interact with the 'external' social and economic spheres. This volume features essays focusing on the fluidity of gender, the economics of sexual and sibling rivalry, the power of the visual, and the cultural echoes of the uncanny.
Trade Review"Desire in the Renaissance is impressive in its range, and shows how comprehensive the use of psychoanalytic theory in literary criticism has become. At their best, the essays demonstrate the power of psychoanalysis to elucidate the convoluted workings of literary language, and argue for its peculiar compatibility with the dizzying gamesmanship of early modern texts."--Katy Emck, Times Literary Supplement
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Worlds Within and Without3The Insincerity of Women19Mistaken Identities: Castiglio(ne)'s Practical Joke39The Female Masquerade: Ariosto and the Game of Desire61Actaeon at the Hinder Gate: The Stag Party in Spenser's Gardens of Adonis91Embodied Voices: Petrarch Reading (Himself Reading) Ovid120Through the Optic Glass: Voyeurism and Paradise Lost146Libidinal Economies: Machiavelli and Fortune's Rape169Female Friends and Fraternal Enemies in As You Like It184From Virgil to Tasso: The Epic Topos as an Uncanny Return207Writing the Specular Son: Jonson, Freud, Lacan, and the (K)not of Masculinity233List of Contributors261Index263
