Queer Subjectivities in Early Modern England

Abstract

"Queer Subjectivities in Early Modern England" contests the prevailing scholarly view that the formation of queer subjectivities could not have preceded the rise to prominence of more modern regimes of gender and sexuality, the hegemonic homo/hetero divide in particular. To the contrary, I demonstrate not only that throughout the period one could construct a sense of self around same- or mixed-sex object choices, but also that the attendant processes of subject formation enabled the development of conspicuously queer(ed) subjectivities---namely, the soldier, the bedfellow, and the sodomite. Tracing the salience of these subjectivities across a multitude of discourses---tragedies, comedies, and problem plays; epic and lyric poems; war manuals and martial conduct books; pro- and anti-theatrical polemics; vernacular translations of classical texts; and more---I show that queer subject formation was both widely recognized and variously interpreted, functioning in some instances (e.g., in the soldier) as a site of profound anxiety, in others (the bedfellow and the sodomite) as an empowering form of dissidence.