A comprehensive volume of essays covering the topics of sexuality and politics in Renaissance drama.

Identifying the stage as a primary site for erotic display, these essays take eroticism in Renaissance culture as a paradigm for issues of sexuality and identity in early modern culture. Contributors examine how the Renaissance stage functioned as a decoder for erotic experience, both reinforcing and subverting expected sexual behaviour. They argue that the dynamics of theatrical eroticism served to deconstruct gender definitions, leaving conventional categories of sexuality blurred, confused - or absent. In seeking to reposition the conventions and subversions of gender and desire in terms of one another, these essays open up an attractive and distinctive perspective in cultural debate.

Violent and recurrent confrontations between disorderly women and patriarchal power are a major feature of the tragedies of Shakespeare, Webster, and Middleton. In this study, Loomba interrelates racial and sexual differences to explore the construction of Renaissance authority and the politics of English studies, particularly Renaissance drama, in postcolonial education. These recurrent confrontations between women and the patriarchal status-quo are discussed in light of the historical and theoretical interweaving of race and gender. The book will be of interest to those studying the history of women and education as well as those interested in Renaissance drama.

A public and highly popular literary form, English Renaissance drama affords a uniquely valuable index of the process of cultural transformation. The Expense of Spirit integrates feminist and historicist critical approaches to explore the dynamics of cultural conflict and change during a crucial period in the formation of modern sexual values. Comparing Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic representations of love and sexuality with those in contemporary moral tracts and religious writings on women, love, and marriage, Mary Beth Rose argues that such literature not only interpreted sexual sensibilities but also contributed to creating and transforming them.

Collection of essays which engages debates over gender in the English Renaissance theater--Cover.

Menon introduces rhetoric into the largely medico-juridical realm of studies on Renaissance sexuality. In doing so, she suggests that rhetoric allows us to think through the erotics of language in ways that pay most attention to the frisson of English Renaissance drama.

This work provides a comprehensive overview of one of the richest periods of theatre history - the drama of early modern England.