Before Intimacy: Asocial Sexuality in Early Modern EnglandU of Minnesota Press, Jan 1, 2006 - 187 pages Before the eighteenth-century rise of the ideology of intimacy, sexuality was defined not by social affiliations but by bodies. In Before Intimacy, Daniel Juan Gil examines sixteenth-century English literary concepts of sexuality that frame erotic ties as neither bound by social customs nor transgressive of them, but rather as “loopholes” in people’s experiences and associations. Engaging the poems of Wyatt, Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, Spenser’s Amoretti and The Faerie Queene, and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida and the Sonnets, Gil demonstrates how sexuality was conceived as a relationship system inhabited by men and women interchangeably—set apart from the “norm” and not institutionalized in a private or domestic realm. Going beyond the sodomy-as-transgression analytic, he asserts the existence of socially inconsequential sexual bonds while recognizing the pleasurable effects of violating the supposed traditional modes of bonding and ideals of universal humanity and social hierarchy. Celebrating the ability of corporeal emotions to interpret connections between people who share nothing in terms of societal structure, Before Intimacy shows how these works of early modern literature provide a discourse of sexuality that strives to understand status differences in erotic contexts and thereby question key assumptions of modernity. Daniel Juan Gil is assistant professor of English at TCU. |
From inside the book
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... social relations that define society as a whole even if, unlike intimacy, it does not have an institutionalized home ... functional dimensions of an early modern society riven by historical change. In order to specify the early modern social ...
... social relations that define society as a whole even if, unlike intimacy, it does not have an institutionalized home ... functional dimensions of an early modern society riven by historical change. In order to specify the early modern social ...
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... functional social world and dropped into a kind of parallel society where the pain of interpersonal breakdown is recast as a pleasurable connection to another body. In the texts I examine, the positive, felt reality of this abstract ...
... functional social world and dropped into a kind of parallel society where the pain of interpersonal breakdown is recast as a pleasurable connection to another body. In the texts I examine, the positive, felt reality of this abstract ...
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... functional social ties on which selves depend. Seen in this light, early modern sexuality amounts to an adaptive response to the trauma of an emerging modernity; where Bersani's infant must survive early life by learning to take ...
... functional social ties on which selves depend. Seen in this light, early modern sexuality amounts to an adaptive response to the trauma of an emerging modernity; where Bersani's infant must survive early life by learning to take ...
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... social life from the ground up, as it were, by focusing our attention on ... functional courtly culture. Although one source for my notion of an ... social practice. In this sense, autonomy for the literary field could not yet be taken ...
... social life from the ground up, as it were, by focusing our attention on ... functional courtly culture. Although one source for my notion of an ... social practice. In this sense, autonomy for the literary field could not yet be taken ...
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... society like Elias and Luhmann, the work of contemporary theorists of sexuality ... functional connections between socially legible persons have been foreclosed ... Social Structure of Passion One of the central xvi.
... society like Elias and Luhmann, the work of contemporary theorists of sexuality ... functional connections between socially legible persons have been foreclosed ... Social Structure of Passion One of the central xvi.
Contents
1 | |
Sidneys Astophil and Stella and Spensers Amoretti | 27 |
3 Civility and the Emotional Topography of The Faerie Queene | 49 |
Fear and Pride in Shakespeares Troilus and Cressida | 77 |
5 Poetic Autonomy and the History of Sexuality in Shakespeares Sonnets | 103 |
Epilogue | 137 |
Notes | 139 |
Index | 181 |
Other editions - View all
Before Intimacy: Asocial Sexuality in Early Modern England Daniel Juan Gil No preview available - 2006 |
Before Intimacy: Asocial Sexuality in Early Modern England Daniel Juan Gil No preview available - 2006 |
Before Intimacy: Asocial Sexuality in Early Modern England Daniel Juan Gil No preview available - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
Achilles Alan Bray Amoretti argues aristocratic asocial sexuality Astrophil beloved Belphebe Belphebe's Bersani blood body bond Boyle Britomart claims conduct manuals connections context conventional court courtly elite cultural Dark Lady define desire discourse of civility discussion doth Early Modern England early modern social early modern society Elizabethan emotions epic eroticism example fact Faerie Queene functional social gender Greek camp Hector Helgerson historical Homosexuality homosocial humanist identity imagined incompatible interpersonal intimacy Jonathan Goldberg kind literary texts Malecasta mediated norms notion pain Pandarus Patroclus Petrarchan poetry play pleasure poems poetic poets powerful pride Raleigh readers relation Renaissance represent seems sequence sex-gender Shakespeare Shakespeare's Sonnets shame shared humanity Sidney Sidney's social contradiction social imaginary social relationships social status social world sodomy sonnet 24 sonnet 30 Spenser Stella suggests theater thee Timias Timias's tion Troilus and Cressida Troilus's Trojan Ulysses University Press women writing Wyatt York Young Man's
Popular passages
Page 107 - Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven,...
Page 125 - In the old age black was not counted fair, Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name ; But now is black beauty's successive heir, And beauty slander'd with a bastard shame : For since each hand hath put on nature's power, Fairing the foul with art's false borrow'd face, Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower, But is profan'd, if not lives in disgrace. Therefore my mistress...
Page 21 - In thin array after a pleasant guise, When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall And she me caught in her arms long and small, Therewithal sweetly did me kiss And softly said, "Dear heart, how like you this?
Page 91 - Strength should be lord of imbecility, And the rude son should strike his father dead ; Force should be right ; or rather, right and wrong (Between whose endless jar justice resides) Should lose their names, and so should justice too. Then...
Page 19 - They flee from me, that sometime did me seek With naked foot, stalking in my chamber. I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek, That now are wild, and do not remember...
Page 20 - Dear heart, how like you this?" It was no dream: I lay broad waking. But all is turned, thorough my gentleness, Into a strange fashion of forsaking; And I have leave to go of her goodness; And she also to use newfangleness.
Page 91 - The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order...
Page 32 - Poesie as nouices newly crept out of the schooles of Dante Arioste and Petrarch, they greatly pollished our rude and homely maner of vulgar Poesie, from that it had bene before, and for that cause may iustly be sayd the first reformers of our English meetre and stile.