Homoerotic Space: The Poetics of Loss in Renaissance Literature by Stephen Guy-Bray (review)

Abstract

464 Reviews the others; she has also provided instructive illustrations, with enlightening com? mentaries. Unsurprisingly, given the magnitude and complexity of this task, there are a few venial errors, omissions, and cut corners. Gilbert too readily assumes that all the details of Pope's epistolary account of a visit to a hermaphrodite in 1714 are literally true (see p. 159); furthermore, an early modern specialist cuts an odd figure when quoting Aphra Behn from critical works (p. 168). Although Gilbert makes excellent use of Sardanapalus, too often omitted from this field of study, a repeated error in the spelling of his name might hamper students using this book as a launch pad for their own research (pp. 18, 20, 213). Equally misleading is the substitution of 'at' for 'in' when transcribing the title of a 'blatantly pornographic work': visions of wellattended sadomasochistic orgies conjured up by A Treatise of the Use of Flogging at Venereal Affairs (1718) are a typographical mirage (p. 143). In most instances, however, Gilbert has succeeded triumphantly,thanks to sophisti? cated awareness ofthe importance of 'story' as an explanatory device, and well-chosen subject matter. She observes that early modern stories about hermaphrodites 'make us question the logic of that which we take for granted' and 'recognize that not all puzzles can be solved' (p. 7). A sense of Gilbert's own story is delicately insinuated into her book, which is presented as 'a product of a certain critical and cultural mo? ment' (p. 4). Her account of a picture of a hermaphrodite in a seventeenth-century manuscript combines argument with autobiographical narration: The lower half of his/herbody is covered by a flap.When lifted it reveals double genitalia . [. . .] The thrillof discovery is mediated by an attendant anxiety surrounding the handling ofthe now delicate flap,which could, one feels, easily come away in the hand, leaving the hermaphroditic genitalia exposed and vulnerable forever more. By carefully lowering the flapwe participate in the ongoing project ofre/coveringthe hermaphroditic body. (pp. 160, 162) Although Gilbert does full justice to early modern and postmodern controversies about Marie/Marin le Marcis, and also makes due mention of Marie Germain/ Germain Garnier and Marguerite/Arnaud Malause, her emphasis lies on English culture. She tells the tantalizingly inconclusive tale of Thomas/ine Hall, and expounds with welcome clarity the complex relationships, in life and literature, be? tween Aniseed-Water Robin, Mull'd-Sack (alias John Cottington), and Mary Frith, best known from Middleton and Dekker's Roaring Girl (1611). New light is shed on such crucially important, but often neglected, texts as Michael Drayton's The MooneCalfe (1627), Loves Cure (1624) by Beaumont and Fletcher, and John Cleveland's 'Upon an Hermophrodite' (1640). The study of such canonical authors as Shake? speare, Spenser, Marlowe, and Milton can only benefit from the enhanced awareness of their contemporary context which emerges fromthis approach. The overall impact of Gilbert's book is best described in the words which she applies to the 'Ravenna monster', born in 1512: 'It was the kind of body that demanded to be read' (p. 213). University of Reading Carolyn D. Williams Homoerotic Space: The Poetics of Loss in Renaissance Literature. By Stephen GuyBray . Toronto, Buffalo, NY, and London: University of Toronto Press. 2002. X+ 265PP. $60; ?40. ISBN 0-8020-3677-5. This interesting but flawed book analyses the problems and possibilities that the ho? moeroticism of classical writings presented to Renaissance authors. As such, it of? fers a new way of thinking about the relationship between the two periods, and forms an important adjunct to work on humanism and the reception of classical literature. MLRy 99.2, 2004 465 Essentially Guy-Bray's point is that Renaissance writers used the models provided them by their classical forebears to 'construct their own homoerotic discourses' (p. 5). Guy-Bray deploys Michel de Certeau's formulation of particularized or 'practiced space' as opposed to a 'particular place': 'if a famous classical text is a public place [...] a reading that highlighted its homoeroticism?a reading that might inform a new poem?would turn that place into a space' (p. 7). The argument is that Renaissance authors used their readings of various classical...