Description
Book SynopsisAn exploration into representations of the Amazon, and how they were essential to homoerotic and heterosexual social constructions in early English texts. This book takes up a range of literary, historical, and theoretical texts in order to examine the relationship between Amazon myth and the social conventions that governed gender and sexuality.
Trade Review“If you are content with received views of female constriction under early modern patriarchy, don't read this book! Through the figure of the Amazon, Kathryn Schwarz offers a dazzling, ground-breaking reinterpretation of major canonical authors—Raleigh, Shakespeare, Jonson, Spenser, Sidney—that is also a celebration of the power and agency of women.”—Leah Marcus, author of
Unediting the Renaissance : Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton“Schwarz’s approach is sophisticated and wide-reaching, as she thinks through the nuanced way in which a single reference or metaphor mediates issues of sexuality/desire, on the one hand, and community formation on the other.”—Wendy Wall, author of
The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Gender in the English RenaissanceTable of ContentsIllustrations
Preface
Introduction
Part One
Abroad at Home: The Question of Queens
Chapter One
Falling off the Endge of the WOrld: Ralegh among the Amazons
Chapter Two
Fearful Simile; Stealing the Breech in Shakespeare's Chronicle Plays
Chapter Three
Stranger in the Mirror: Amazon Reflections in the Jacobean Queen's Masque
Part Two
Splitting the Difference: Homoeroticism and Home Life
Chapter Four
Dressed to Kill: Looking for Love in the Faerie Queene
Chapter Five
The Probably Impossible: Inventing Lesbians in Arcadia
Chapter Six
Tragical Mirth: Framing Shakespeare's Hippolyta
Epilogue: Via the Two Noble Kinsmen
Notes
Bibliography
Index
