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Edward II and a Literature of Same-Sex Love
The Gay King in Fiction, 1590–1640
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2016
Summary
The narrative re-tellings of the life, reign, and death of the English King Edward II (reigned 1307–1327) present a unique opportunity for scholars of sexuality in the early modern era. This is because the works of authors like Christopher Marlowe, Michael Drayton, Sir Francis Hubert, Elizabeth Cary, and Richard Niccols were all inspired by the public, cultural memory fashioned from Edward’s same-sex love affair with Piers Gaveston. As such, each of them presents a particular representation of and a specific discourse about male-male sexual relations in the Renaissance. In other words, what these works present is a concentrated body of literature about same-sex love in the early modern era: works that openly and frankly explore the possible origins of the love, the reasons and causes for it; works that explore the ramifications of male-male romantic relationships; works that explore the sexual politics and sociocultural dynamics of same-sex romantic partnerships; and works that describe and denote same-sex love from an English Renaissance perspective. This study looks at each of the major Renaissance texts about Edward II and examines the means through which each text understands and analyzes the nature of male-male same-sex love. From Marlowe’s crafting of a lover-identity for Edward to Drayton’s obsession with Marlowe’s version of (gay) history; from Hubert’s Augustinian construction of Edward’s nature to Cary’s identification with the fallen king to Niccols’ inspired exemplum, what each of these works demonstrates is that the “love that dare not speak its name” would not be silenced, at least not in the case of Edward and Gaveston. When one sees the name Edward II, one also sees his same-sex loves. The correlation has become ingrained into our public recall of history. Thus, as far as the world is concerned, Edward II was—and ever will be—the gay king.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2016
ISBN-Print
978-1-4985-3458-1
ISBN-Online
978-1-4985-3459-8
Publisher
Lexington, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
291
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
Acknowledgments No access
Introduction No access Pages 1 - 36
Chapter One: Sexuality as Silence No access Pages 37 - 98
Chapter Two: Sexuality as Identity No access Pages 99 - 130
Chapter Three: Sexuality as History No access Pages 131 - 174
Chapter Four: Sexuality as (Flawed) Nature No access Pages 175 - 210
Chapter Five: Sexuality as Disease No access Pages 211 - 238
Chapter Six: Sexuality as (Political, Moral, Cultural) Exemplum? No access Pages 239 - 260
