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Queer Theory, Queer Historicism: Recent Works

Queer Theory, Queer Historicism:Recent Works Melissa E. Sanchez (bio) John Garrison. Friendship and Queer Theory in the Renaissance: Gender and Sexuality in Early Modern England. New York: Routledge, 2014, 172 + xxx pages. $148.00 cloth. Valerie Traub. Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015, 462 + xiv pages. $59.95 cloth. Simone Chess. Male-to-Female Crossdressing in Early Modern English Literature. New York: Routledge, 2015, 196 pages. $155.00 cloth. Jeffrey Masten. Queer Philologies: Sex, Language, and Affect in Shakespeare's Time. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016, 354 + xiv pages. $59.95 cloth. Will Stockton. Members of His Body: Shakespeare, Paul, and a Theology of Nonmonogamy. New York: Fordham University Press, 2017, 178 + x pages. $25.00 paperback. Over the past decade or so, the question of queer theory's relationship to history has stimulated a good deal of thought and (sometimes polemical) debate in early modern studies. Essays, reviews, books, edited volumes, conference [End Page 141] panels, seminars, and special journal issues have addressed the complex interchange among method, politics, and affect.1 The set of books under discussion here, all published between 2014 and 2017, demonstrate that the conversation is far from over. They not only contribute new knowledge and perspectives to queer early modern studies but also—to borrow Valerie Traub's words—offer rich opportunity for "metacritical reflections on why we do what we do the way we do it" (315). Method and metacriticism can mean a lot of things, but the particular question I am interested in exploring in this review essay is the relation between queer theory and queer history: if theory, as Traub writes, implies an abstract, widely applicable speculation or principle, and history accentuates particularity and specificity, how might these two approaches complement, correct, and expand upon one another?2 Turning to foundational topics for early modern sexuality studies—friendship (Garrison), epistemology (Traub), cross-dressing (Chess), philology (Masten), and Christian marriage (Stockton)—these five books answer that question in ways that are both surprising and compelling. One approach, as Garrison, Traub, and Chess demonstrate, is to return to topics that have been central to queer studies for such a long time that it would be easy to think there is nothing new left to know or say about them. In the cases of these three books, those topics are, respectively, friendship, sex, and cross-dressing. Garrison builds on (and generously engages) a considerable body of scholarship that has established same-sex friendship as a culturally central alternative to heterosexual marriage in the classical, medieval, and early modern periods, an alternative that was valued insofar as it offered a model of egalitarian and sincere attachment that contrasted with the hierarchical structure and economic impetus of marriage. However, Garrison's analysis departs significantly from much that has come before; he shows how, even as queer scholars have contested the view that heterosexual marriage is a transhistorical ideal, they may have replicated its structure by emphasizing classical philosophy's overt attachment to the couple form and repudiation of socioeconomic interest. As a result, early modernists have overlooked the extent to which both classical and early modern philosophies of friendship express longing for more varied and numerous attachments. Garrison recovers a number of attempts to expand the definition of friendship not only to include groups as well as dyads, but also to embrace the possibilities of self-interest, in the form of both sexual pleasure and economic profit. Garrison also challenges some of the usual boundaries of period and genre. Along with a reconsideration of Aristotle and Cicero, he traces the influence of medieval [End Page 142] friendship treatises that expand the classical model to encompass group and financially beneficial relations, particularly in a monastic context, and thereby resists a sharp distinction between medieval and Renaissance, religious and humanist, thought. He convenes a range of genres and contexts—from canonical Shakespeare poems and plays to masques produced in the Inns of Court to Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum and Milton's Paradise Lost and Epitaphium Daemonis—all works that depict fluid "friendship networks" rather than dyadic pairs.3 The result is that we have a less noble...

The Politics of Chieftaincy Authority and Property in Colonial Ghana, 1920–1950

Naaborko Sackeyfio-Lenoch, The Politics of Chieftaincy Authority and Property in Colonial Ghana, 1920–1950. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2014. 241 + xiv pages. Gã history is a veritable conundrum, shaped by centuries-old socio-economic and cultural processes, and laden with

High Table-Talk

High Table-Talk Sam Pickering (bio) Robert Benson , Wedding the Wild Particular. Texas Review Press, 2012. 224 pages. $20.95 pb; Joseph Epstein , Essays in Biography. Axios Press, 2012. xii + 564 pages. Illustrated. $24; Philip Gerard , The Patron Saint of Dreams. Hub City Press, 2012. xiv + xiv pages. $17.95 pb; David George Haskell , The Forest Unseen. Penguin, 2013. xiv + xiv pages. $16 pb; Richard O'Mara , The Street Where They Lived. Alondra Press, 2011. 140 pages. $12.95 pb; Peter Ryan , It Strikes Me. Quadrant Books, 2011. 314 pages. $44.95; Ridley Wills II , Nashville Streets & Their Stories. Plumbline Media, 2012. xii + xii pages. Illustrated. No price provided, pb. "There is something almost indecent," Cunningham Graham declares, "in setting forth all a man thinks and feels, without an explanation or at least a prelude of some sort. A fencing master goes through the salute, a jockey takes a preliminary canter, even divines resort to incantations of some kind before they fall a-preaching." Essays in Biography is an anthology of Joseph Epstein's occasional reviews—usually of biographies, letters, and sometimes critical books. Epstein divides the book into sections devoted to Americans, Englishmen, popular culture, as well as "And Others." The book, however, lacks and needs an introduction. Certainly prefaces confine and distort, but they also explain and place better than basket-like words that lack real bottoms. Epstein is primarily intrigued by New Yorkers, Jewish writers, cultural entrepreneurs, and the chatty English, these last always on the verge of writing great books but who specialize in shaping small memorable put-downs. He does not, for example, discuss any southern American writers. Of course the content of the book is not a failing but simply reflects an author's choice. Inclination should determine reading and writing, but good introductions probe and reveal—and often deepen enjoyment. Essays is a once-a-night, once-a-week book, attractive primarily to flagging thinkers—aging magazine people interested in culture but who lack the energy or curiosity to read a bookshelf-bending biography. Epstein is quick with the quip, and his essays provide kernels of intellectual nourishment. "Talking," Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "is like playing on the harp; there is as much in laying the hands on the strings to stop their vibrations as in twanging them to bring out their music." Essays is composed of high table-talk, wit recollected in tranquility, the sorts of remarks that one wishes he had made in conversation but that appear only on the page. Cyril Connolly, Epstein writes, "had a taste—a propensity?, an aptitude?—for failure that [End Page 630] never left him." "Susan Sontag, as F. R. Leavis said of the Sitwells, belongs less to the history of literature than to that of publicity." "Arthur Schlesinger will probably go down in history as an unregenerate publicist for a line of progressive ideas that by the late 20th century would lose their hold on the imagination of many Americans." Maurice Bowra, Epstein writes, "was a thoroughly social being, lonely as only a deeply gregarious bachelor can be, a man by nature, of the group, the clique, the coterie." What makes Epstein appealing, yet, strangely enough, irritating, is that his judgments are usually right. Sontag is a caffeinated regional taste fast becoming stale. Connolly's pangs of mediocrity bore rather than intrigue readers, and Schlesinger has shrunk into a wilted Kennedy hierophant. Alas, the description of Bowra makes me wince, as I suspect it will make many aged readers wince—that is, those social beings among us who have slipped from almost all groups into loneliness. Epstein is a master of quotation. Of Hugh Trevor-Roper he notes that Bowra declared that the historian "had never known adultery to do so much for a man." Trevor-Roper, Epstein himself writes, "suffered fools not at all, and one had only to disagree with him to qualify as a fool. What must have made this all the more infuriating is that he seems to have been correct much of the time." Like a diamond, bright snappy prose does not chip easily and resists sharp argument—the source perhaps of my irritation with Epstein. Of course, I...

Innovation and Marketing in the Video Game Industry: Avoiding the Performance Trap by DavidWesley and GloriaBarczak. Surrey, UK: Gower, 2010. 266 + xiv pages. US$124.95.

Journal of Product Innovation ManagementVolume 30, Issue 1 p. 187-188 Book Review Innovation and Marketing in the Video Game Industry: Avoiding the Performance Trap by David Wesley and Gloria Barczak. Surrey, UK: Gower, 2010. 266 + xiv pages. US$124.95. Erik A. J. Johnson, Erik A. J. Johnson Columbia UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Erik A. J. Johnson, Erik A. J. Johnson Columbia UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 20 December 2012 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5885.2012.00994_3.xCitations: 1Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Citing Literature Volume30, Issue1January 2013Pages 187-188 RelatedInformation

The Incredible Woman: Power and Sexual Politics by Jocelynne A Scutt

This article is a book review of Jocelynne A Scutt The Incredible Woman: Power and Sexual Politics (Artemis Publishing, Melbourne, 1997) (vol 1, 336 + xiv pages, $AUS34.95; vol 2, 354 + xvii pages, $AUS34.95). The book is an anthology of scholarship that acts as a catalogue of the wrong standards that the law has applied to women's performances and women's experiences. Petersson stresses the importance of this book for feminist legal scholarship as it increases the volume of such works, increasing the possibility of political change. Scutt's book is praised for being an exemplary voice for raising awareness in this area by making the message clear and accessible.

Fundamentals of European Civil Law

This article is a book review of Martin Vranken Fundamentals of European Civil Law (Federation Press, Sydney, 1997) 290 + xiv pages including Appendix, Bibliography and Index. Soft cover, NZ$45. Angelo states that the book is very tightly and clearly presented, providing a good introductory text for several purposes including the central topics of comparative law, a basic introduction to the law of contract, tort labour law and commercial company law in the French and German systems, as well as within the context of the European Union. Angelo concludes that the book provides a reasoned and correct view of the impact of the European Union on aspects of the private law of the member states.

Bookshelf

AbstractThe Assessment of Clinical Competence in General Family Practice., W. E. Fabb, J. R. Marshall, MTP Press, Lancaster (1983) 201 + x pages. Price £24.95Obstetrical Decision Making, E. A. Friedman (ed.), Year Book Medical, London (1982) 222 + xiv pages. Price £25. 50.Staff Development Matters. Academic Staff Training and Development in Universities of the United Kingdom, A Review: 1961–1981, Christopher C. Matheson, CCTUT (Coordinating Committee for the Training of University Teachers), University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ (1981) 231 pages. Price (paperback) £6.00

A review of: “Reaction Rates of Isotopic Molecules. Lars Melander and William H. Saunders, Jr. John Wiley and Sons, New York 1980, 331 + xiv pages. $29.95.”

(1981). A review of: “Reaction Rates of Isotopic Molecules. Lars Melander and William H. Saunders, Jr. John Wiley and Sons, New York 1980, 331 + xiv pages. $29.95.”. Synthesis and Reactivity in Inorganic and Metal-Organic Chemistry: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 97-98.

Bibliography on time series and stochastic processes, edited by H. O. A. Wold, published for the International Statistical Institute by Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh and London, 1965. 516 + xiv pages. £5. 15s.

Bibliography on time series and stochastic processes, edited by H. O. A. Wold, published for the International Statistical Institute by Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh and London, 1965. 516 + xiv pages. £5. 15s.

The Art of Running a Ship - The Master and His Ship, Charles H. Cotter, 231 + xiv pages, fully illustrated, cloth, 9¾ × 6¼ in., The Maritime Press, 1962, 27s. 6d.

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A Monograph on the Ammonites of the English Corallian Beds. Part XIV Pages (i)–(vi), 379–420; including Title Page, Table of Contents, Preface and Index

A Monograph on the Ammonites of the English Corallian Beds. Part XIV Pages (i)–(vi), 379–420; including Title Page, Table of Contents, Preface and Index

A study of achievement and subject matter in general science

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. June 1923. Major: Education. Advisor: Dr W. S. Miller. 1 computer file (PDF); vi, 162, xiv pages.