Shakespeare, Authority, Sexuality: Unfinished Business in Cultural Materialism

by Sinfield; Alan

• ISBN13: 9780415402354
• ISBN10: 0415402352
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-08-21
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Shakespeare, Authority, Sexuality is a powerful reassessment of cultural materialism as a way of understanding the intersections of textuality, history, culture and politics by one of the founding figures of this critical movement. Alan Sinfield examines cultural materialism both as a body of ongoing argument, and as it informs particular works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, especially in relation to sexuality in early-modern England and queer theory. The book has several interlocking preoccupations: Theories of textuality and reading Authority in Shakespearean Plays and in the organization of literary culture today The sex/gender system in that period and the application of queer theory in history These preoccupations are explored in and around a range of works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Throughout the book Sinfield re-presents cultural materialism, framing it not as a set of propositions, as has often been done, but as a cluster of unresolvedproblems. His brilliant, lucid and committed readings demonstrate that the 'unfinished business' of cultural materialism - and Sinfield's work in particular - will long continue to produce new questions and challenges for the field of Renaissance Studies.

Author Biography

Alan Sinfield is Professor of English at the University of Sussex.

Table of Contents

Unfinished business : problems in cultural materialism	p. 1
Pastoral, As you like it, and the ideology of literary history	p. 31
Poetaster, the author, and the perils of cultural production	p. 40
How to read The merchant of Venice without being heterosexist	p. 53
Intertextuality and the limits of queer reading in A midsummer night's dream and The two noble kinsmen	p. 68
Effeminacy, friendship and the hero in Marlowe and Shakespeare	p. 86
Near misses : Ganymedes and page boys	p. 112
Sex and the lyric : Sidney, Barnfield, Marlowe	p. 134
What happens in Shakespeare's sonnets	p. 162
Rape and rights : Measure for measure and the limits of cultural imperialism	p. 181
Unfinished business II	p. 197
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