Sexuality and Form: Caravaggio, Marlowe, and Bacon [Hardcover]

Graham L. Hammill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0226315185 | ISBN-13: 978-0226315188 | Edition: 1

This ambitious, wide-ranging study of sexuality, aesthetics, and epistemology covers everything from the aesthetics of war to the works of Caravaggio, Michaelangelo, Christopher Marlowe, and Francis Bacon, synthesizing queer theory and psychoanalysis and demonstrating the role of the body and the flesh as both a problem and a promise within the narrative arts.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Hammill's ability to connect the dots of various disciplines to make a big cultural picture is nothing short of brilliant.... Original, daring, disturbing, polemical and persuasive. It stands head and shoulders above almost all, if not all, books on sex and violence (and outsiderness and cultural impact)." - Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance "Breathtaking, substantial, and original.... Hammill's use of humanist, Biblical, and psychoanalytic paradigms and micro-histories to intervene in current cultural studies of homosexuality and 'sexed thinking' is much needed. Readers will leave this book convinced that the flesh cannot be thought of outside a psychoanalytic register." - Julia Lupton, author of Afterlives of the Saints

From the Inside Flap

In a far-ranging series of readings that considers Italian humanism, art history, Elizabethan drama, early experimental science, and contemporary theory, Graham Hammill offers a new poetics of sexuality. Arguing against the reduction of sex to historical information, Hammill compels us to reconceive sexuality and its relationship to history through the aesthetic: he proposes that in Western encounters with homosexuality, the flesh emerges as both a problem and a promise at the limits of the visual and dramatic narrative arts.

Sexuality and Form explores the insistence of the flesh as an element of carnality that resists exchange and conversion. Beginning with humanist aesthetics and the art of war, Hammill first discusses how the body gets aligned with various and subtle forms of violence. He then explores the epistemological and aesthetic spaces in the paintings of Caravaggio and Michaelangelo, the plays of Christopher Marlowe, and the scientific treatises of Francis Bacon, demonstrating how in each the flesh is bruised into visibility through poses that underwrite and belie ideals of secular civility.

Sexuality and Form is an ambitious new study of sexuality, aesthetics, and epistemology—one of the first works of its kind to bring queer theory and psychoanalysis together within a Renaissance framework.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 227 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (November 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226315185
• ISBN-13: 978-0226315188
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,322,990 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Academic Book, February 2, 2005

By 

C. M. Wiggins (Sarasota, FL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sexuality and Form: Caravaggio, Marlowe, and Bacon (Hardcover)

Hammill's book offers an interesting and much needed discussion of three important men relating issues of sexuality to the formation of their individual arts. Hammill presents his arguement in intriging and complex ways, greatly expanding the boundaries of his field and laying the groundwork for other scholars. I am surprised by the impassioned hatred of the other reviewer. They seem for some reason shocked that a book published by a University press, and using the line "Sexuality and Form is an ambitious new study of sexuality, aesthetics, and epistemology--one of the first works of its kind to bring queer theory and psychoanalysis together within a Renaissance framework" to describe itself should be written in academic language. This is a wonderful book for anyone who has taken college level art course and or ha studied lietrary/queer theory at the college level. Others might find it a bit opaque, but if you are willing to put in the time and effort you will be greatly rewarded. This is an academic study and is written in academic language, a language transparent to anyone trained to read it. I find it bemusing to read someone vilifying an academic book for being just that: academic. It's analogous to reading a pornographic novel and criticizing it for containing too much sex.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Less than meets the eye, August 9, 2008

By 

J. Crewe (Norwich, VT) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sexuality and Form: Caravaggio, Marlowe, and Bacon (Paperback)

Ambitious book with a high theory profile. Should be read by people interested in the "queer Renaissance" but promises more than it delivers.

5 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Do not Buy! NOT in English!, October 20, 2004

By 

Lawrence Patrick Johnson "Vaurian" (San Diego, Ca) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sexuality and Form: Caravaggio, Marlowe, and Bacon (Paperback)

I've been cheated! This book isn't in English, but in academic babble! Before you buy it, try making sense of the very first paragraph:
"Sexuality and Form argues that sex is a limit of the civilizing process. It examines some of the epistemological and aesthetic spaces created by Renaissance painting, drama, and science - by Michelangelo Caravaggio, Christopher Marlow, and Francis Bacon, to be more specific - that permit attempts to think sex at the limit of civilized, social judgement. It is my contention that Carravagio, Marlow and Bacon share the attempt to construct experimental lines of sexed thinking - minor literatures, as Gilles Deleuza and Felix Guattari might put it - that rework, overturn, modify, and drain the normative force of civilized judgement from within. Specifically, I will argue that each of these thinkers is able to produce a temporal pose that is irreducible to social thought. What makes these experimental lines of thinking sexed is not simply the content of their thought but the various disjunctions between forms and substances upon which these lines of thinking insist, disjunctions whose locus in all three figures - Caravaggio, Marlow, and Bacon - is the epistemological space of the body being judged."
Try rereading it. Still no luck? Try this thought experiment: Imagine sitting in a 16th cent London tavern and telling Kip Marlow that he "share(s) the attempt to construct experimental lines of sexed thinking", or that he "insist(s)" on "various disjunctions between form and substance" ("insist"(s), mind you!). It'll be news to him! Shame on all who write, edit or peddle this nonsence! Shame on the University of Chicago Press!Why publish it? This language is not meant to communicate ideas. I'm reminds me of little boys in their back yard fort, talking their trivialities in pig latin so that the little girls can't understand them. If professor Hammill wants to engage his collegues (whomever they may be)in such a puerile game and call it scholarlship, that's their right. But I deeply resent being tricked into paying for it!