Sodometries: Renaissance Texts, Modern Sexualities [Paperback]

Jonathan Goldberg (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0804720517 | ISBN-13: 978-0804720519 | Publication Date: December 1992

This book is about representations of sodomy. While most of the texts it considers are literary-works by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, among others-it is framed by political considerations, notably the 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bowers v. Hardwick that denied any constitutional act to private consensual acts that the court termed 'homosexual sodomy' and the rhetoric attaching sodomy to Saddam Hussein in the initial U.S. war in Iraq.The book takes as axiomatic Foucault's description of sodomy as 'that utterly confused category.' Without collapsing questions of historical difference, it works to articulate relations between the early modern period and our own, between a time before the homo/heterosexual divide and the modern regimes that assume it. In this book, sodometries (a Renaissance word for 'sodomy' chosen for its nonce-word suggestiveness) are sites of complications around definitions of sex and gender. Because 'sodomy' is not a term capable of singular definition, representations of sodomy are never direct. Sodomy exists only relationally.Three social domains for textual production are explored in this book: the sixteenth-century English court as the location of high literariness; the theater, especially as a site for controversy around cross-dressing; the New World as the place where the slaughter of native populations (and, in New England, of Englishmen as well) was carried out in the name of ridding the hemisphere of sodomites. These lethal impulses are read as foundational for a U.S. imaginary still operative in many powerful quarters.The analyses of literary texts engage the most advanced work in early modern literary criticism (that done by feminist and New Historicist critics) and proposes a queer perspective that necessarily complicates and enriches such inquiries. Besides offering detailed readings of literary texts not often read in terms of the history of sexuality (Shakespeare's history plays, for example), the book also examines narratives of the conquest and colonization of the Americas.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“At the very cutting edge of its field, an indispensable guide to the sexuality of the world that preceded our own”—Alan J. M. Bray

“Sodometries is a stunning book: the complexity of its intelligence and the beauty of its stylistic accomplishments take one’s breath away.”—Journal of the History of Sexuality

“As an example of literary and historical study brought to bear upon contemporary problems, Sodometries is unparalleled by any other work on early modern sexuality that I know.”—South Atlantic Review

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the Back Cover

“At the very cutting edge of its field, an indispensable guide to the sexuality of the world that preceded our own”—Alan J. M. Bray
“Sodometries is a stunning book: the complexity of its intelligence and the beauty of its stylistic accomplishments take one’s breath away.”—Journal of the History of Sexuality

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 295 pages
• Publisher: Stanford University Press (December 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804720517
• ISBN-13: 978-0804720519
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,728,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Polemic, December 16, 2006

By 

Gregory T. Lombardo (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sodometries: Renaissance Texts, Modern Sexualities (Paperback)

One of a hoard of post-modern/new historicist interpretations of Renaissance literature with a cultural and political axe to grind. It has some historical interest in that it focuses on sexual realities that were traditionally shunned. That said, it wrenches the sense of works in order to serve its own ends.
Gregory T. Lombardo MD, PhD