Before the Closet: Same-Sex Love from "Beowulf" to "Angels in America" [Hardcover]

Allen J. Frantzen (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226260917 | ISBN-13: 978-0226260914 | Publication Date: November 15, 1998 | Edition: 1

Allen J. Frantzen challenges the long accepted view that the early Middle Ages tolerated and even fostered same-sex relations and that intolerance of homosexuality developed only late in the medieval period. Frantzen shows that in early medieval Europe, the Church did not tolerate same-sex acts, in fact it was an age before people recognized the existence—or the possibility—of the "closet."

With its ambitious scope and elegant style, Before the Closet sets same-sex relations in Anglo-Saxon sources in relation to the sexual themes of contemporary opera, dance, and theatre. Frantzen offers a comprehensive analysis of sources from the seventh to the twelfth century and traces Anglo-Saxon same-sex behavior through the age of Chaucer and into the Renaissance.

"Frantzen's marvelous book . . . opens up a world most readers will never have even known was there. It's a difficult topic, but Frantzen's comprehensive, readable and even wryly funny treatment makes this an unexpected pleasure."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Historical studies of sexuality and homosexuality are often time- and place-specific. It is a refreshing surprise that Allen J. Frantzen's Before the Closet moves deftly from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance to the present and back again, but even the book's subtitle--Same-Sex Love from Beowulf to Angels in America--does not give a clear sense of its breadth and expansiveness. Arguing that John Boswell's critically acclaimed Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality misrepresents the easy acceptance of homosexuality in the early and medieval Catholic church, Frantzen postulates that, while same-sex activity and relationships were strictly forbidden, they existed and manifested themselves in various "shadow" forms.

Frantzen's argument for the existence of this "shadow" homosexuality relies on myriad examples from a wide range of Western culture. From 19th-century trouser roles (male operatic characters sung by women) to Mark Morris's choreography to Tony Kushner's award-winning Angels in America, Frantzen finds correspondences and analogues to far older works of Anglo-Saxon literature such as Beowulf and The Wanderer, along with medieval penitentials (books used by priests to assess the penance for a specific sin). Always enlightening and endlessly provocative, Before the Closet will challenge your preconceptions about both early English poetry and contemporary depictions of gayness. --Michael Bronski

From Publishers Weekly

An exciting account of medieval sexuality? Surprisingly, yes. Loyola University English professor Frantzen brings the "shadows" of same-sex relations ("as closely attached to heterosexual relations as shadows are to their objects") into relief by highlighting their centrality in everything from operatic "trouser roles," in which women dress as men in ambiguous visions of female-female desire, to the dances of Mark Morris, which "offer gay people entertainment and affirmation of the highest order." Turning to his specialty, Frantzen reveals an Anglo-Saxon world much less prudish than we are accustomed to imagining. Where "queer theory" has sought to uncover gay liberation in the past, his "assimilationist" model never limits same-sex desire to genital contact. An engaging and witty guide to tales of cross-dressing saints, legal codes paying much more attention to heterosexual than homosexual misbehavior and references to "Sodom and Gomorrah" less severe than one would expect, he discovers both self-identified same-sex lovers and a culture that allowed them a certain license. Pointing out the nationalist chauvinism of the numerous historians who have labeled William the Conqueror's son gay, Frantzen also makes clear the vast difference between medieval and modern conceptions of sexual identity. Frantzen's marvelous book, concluding with a fascinating discussion of how Angels in America reverses Anglo-Saxon codes of national unification, opens up a world most readers will never have even known was there. It's a difficult topic, but Frantzen's comprehensive, readable and even wryly funny treatment makes this an unexpected pleasure.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 380 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (November 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226260917
• ISBN-13: 978-0226260914
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,071,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

We're always looking for ways to connect past and present. My new book, Anglo-Saxon Keywords: A Modular Approach to Early Medieval Culture, takes 75 words that were important then and now--words like alcohol, behavior, food, labor, magic, masculinity, sex, and tradition. Each word is the focus of a short essay comparing the meaning and use of the word in the Old English period (600-1200 AD) to the way we use it. The model for this project is Raymond Williams' Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (rev. ed. 1983), and New Keywords (ed. Tony Bennett et al., 2005).
Also in the works: Food Networks: Eating and Identity in Early Medieval England; and an (unnamed) book on medieval masculinity.
After that, a book on white color boxing. "No other subject is, for the writer, so intensely personal as boxing," Joyce Carol Oates wrote in On Boxing. When I'm not writing, I'm working out with my trainer or my boxing coach. It would be nice to counter Oates by saying that, for the boxer, no experience is so intensely personal as writing. But it's not true. Boxing is even more personal than writing, and a lot more intense. A writer says "I hit on an idea," or "I was struck by the fact," but it's a lot more satisfying to land a punch and a lot more real to catch one.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This review appeared in Publishers Weekly 9/14/98 (p. 9), November 3, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Before the Closet: Same-Sex Love from "Beowulf" to "Angels in America" (Hardcover)

An exciting account of medieval sexuality? Surprisingly, yes. Loyola University English professor Frantzen brings the "shadows" of same-sex relations ("as closely attached to heterosexual relations as shadows are to their objects") into relief by highlighting their centrality in everything from operatic "trouser roles," in which women dress as men in ambiguous visions of female-female desire, to the dances of Mark Morris, which "offer gay people entertainment and affirmation of the highest order." Turning to his specialty, Frantzen reveals an Anglo-Saxon world much less prudish than we are accustomed to imagining. Where "queer theory" has sought to uncover gay liberation in the past, his "assimilationist" model never limits same-sex desire to genital contact. An engaging and witty guide to tales of cross-dressing saints, legal codes paying much more attention to heterosexual than homosexual misbehavior and references to "Sodom and Gomorrah" less severe than one would expect, he discovers both self-identified same-sex lovers and a culture that allowed them a certain license. Pointing out the nationalist chauvinism of the numerous historians who have labeled William the Conqueror's son gay, Frantzen also makes clear the vast difference between medieval and modern conceptions of sexual identity. Frantzen's marvelous book, concluding with a fascinating discussion of how Angels in America reverses Anglo-Saxon codes of national unification, opens up a world most readers will never have even known was there. It's a difficult topic, but Frantzen's comprehensive, readable and even wryly funny treatment makes this an unexpected pleasure. (0ct.)