Paul Hammond

The Modern Period

During the twentieth century the ways in which sexual relations between men were understood changed almost beyond recognition. In the early years, theorists published accounts of what was variously calle? ‘homosexualit?’ o? ‘inversion’. The German lawyer Carl Heinrich Ulrichs argued in the later nineteenth century that homosexuals were to be thought of as female spirits in male bodies, an intermediate sex. At the turn of the century, Havelock Ellis in hi? Sexual Inversio? demonstrated the widespread historical occurrence of homosexual behaviour, and urged that it should be regarded as an abnormality or sport of nature rather than a disease or a degenerate condition. Edward Carpenter, in his long Whitmanesque poe? Towards Democrac? (1883-1905) developed a socialist vision of a community based upon love between men, and his idealization of working-dass men added a new element to literatur?’s repertoire of homosexual motifs; meanwhile his antholog? Iolau? (1902) assembled literary examples of passionate friendship from ancient times to the present, forming a homoerotic canon. The present chapter focuses first on the writings of two novelists of the early twentieth century, Lawrence and Forster, the latter timidly homosexual, the former passionately devoted to the ideal of male comradeship which included a strong homoerotic element. The discussion then turns to the literature produced in the two world wars, when languages of companionship and of desire were often interwoven?

Shakespeare and Renaissance Europe

This collection of essays explores the diverse ways in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries experienced and imagined Europe. The book charts the aspects of European politics and culture which interested Renaissance travellers, thus mapping the context within which Shakespeares plays with European settings would have been received. Chapters cover the politics of continental Europe, the representation of foreigners on the English stage, the experiences of English travellers abroad, Shakespeares reading of modern European literature, the influence of Italian comedy, his presentation of Moors from Europes southern frontier, and his translation of Europe into settings for his plays.

John Milton : life, writing, reputation

1. Milton: Literature and Life 2. Milton and the Classics 3. Milton on Knowing Good from Evil 4. Milton and the Poetry of the Fall 5. Milton and the Regicide 6. Miltons Christian Temper 7. Milton, Marriage, and the Politics of Gender 8. Milton and the Romantics 9. Milton in the Twentieth Century 10. Milton and his Biographers

Friends or Lovers? Sensitivity to Homosexual Implications in Adaptations of Shakespeare, 1640–1701

On 1 July 1663 Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary: Sir J. Mennes and Mr. Batten both say that buggery is now almost grown as common among our gallants as in Italy, and that the very pages of the town begin to complain of their masters for it. But blessed be God, I do not to this day know what is the meaning of this sin, nor which is the agent nor which the patient.2 Pepys’s ignorance about the meaning of ‘buggery’ may strike us as endearingly naive, but a version of his puzzlement is current today as scholars seek to understand the meaning of sexual relations between men in the early modern period. Our own ignorance concerns the ways in which homosexuale relationships were understood and represented within the epistemological structures (and therefore also the ideological and political structures) of seventeenth-century England. Part of the problem for modern interpreters is that homoerotic desire is rarely made articulate unambiguously in texts from this period, and instead often speaks the same language as passionate friendship.

The Rhetoric of Space and Self in Racine’s Bérénice

Abstract This essay explores the ways in which Racine defines the physical and conceptual spaces which his characters inhabit in Bérénice, and illustrates the semantic complexity of some of the play’s principal terms.

The Texture of the Past

During the trial of Oscar Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895, a debate arose over the interpretation of a literary text. Counsel for the prosecution quoted some lines from a poem by Lord Alfred Douglas calle? ‘Two Loves’?: ‘Sweet youth, Tell me why, sad and sighing, dost thou rove These pleasant realms? I pray thee tell me sooth, What is thy name?’ He sai?, ‘My name is Lov?,’ Then straight the first did turn himself to me, And crie?, ‘He lieth, for his name is Shame. But I am Love, and I was wont to be Alone in this fair garden, till he came Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame?’ Then sighing said the othe?, ‘Have thy will, I am the Love that dare not speak its name’?

Tragic time in Racine’s Andromaque

ABSTRACT This article explores the complex ways in which Racine handles time in Andromaque, particularly as it is experienced by the tragic protagonist Andromaque herself.

Catholic reformation in protestant Britain

publication, Childs argues, that created the template of a sadistic monster which would be used in subsequent historical accounts and works of fiction such as R.D. Blackmore’s Lorna Doone (1869). It might have been interesting had this section also discussed the perpetuation of folk memories in the West Country – by all accounts the local feeling against Percy Kirke was still very strong at the time of the anniversary re-enactment of the battle of Sedgemoor in 1985 – but there are obvious difficulties in tracing the origin of such phenomena. The final chapter of the book is devoted to an epilogue, which discusses the fate of the main characters, and ends not with Percy Kirke but with a sentence reporting the death of Sir John Lanier in 1692; a pity, as a concluding chapter might have afforded some useful reflection on the various issues raised in the book. As it is, many questions remain, particularly as regards the extent of Kirke’s loyalty to the Williamite regime, both during the Glorious Revolution (Chapter 8) and during the subsequent campaign in Ireland (Chapters 9 and 10). Percy Kirke was a slippery customer who kept his options open, and it is evident that he has proved a difficult subject to pin down. Nevertheless, General Percy Kirke and the Later Stuart Army contains much of interest, and students of the period should find it a useful reference work.

Dryden’s Virgilian Kings

This essay discusses the forms of kingship which Dryden represents in his translation of Virgil’s Aeneid.

John K. Hale and J. Donald Cullington, The Complete Works of John Milton: Volume VIII: De Doctrina Christiana

Miltons De Doctrina Christiana has had a rough history. The text of what Milton himself called his best and most precious possession was dictated by the blind author to several amanuenses and frequently revised, necessitating crabbed additions to increasingly crowded pages until some leaves were impossible to use and had to be transcribed afresh. A move to have the work printed abroad came to nothing, and De Doctrina Christiana languished unregarded among the state papers until it was rediscovered in 1823, to be edited and translated by Charles Sumner in 1825. Sumner is to be congratulated for his work on the manuscript, but his transcription was not faultless and his translation tended to be wordy and loose where Miltons Latin was precise and terse; moreover, the biblical quotations upon which Miltons whole edifice rests were given by Sumner in the Authorized Version, which often provided only an approximate rendering of the texts whose Latin phrasing Milton chose carefully (and sometimes adjusted) from among the several versions available to him. The two principal editions of Miltons prose works in the twentieth century did the work a disservice in two quite different ways. The Columbia edition in 1937 did little more than reprint Sumners text and translation, while the Yale edition of 1973 commissioned a new translation from John Carey with learned annotation from Maurice Kelley, but bizarrely omitted the Latin text completely. We have long needed a new edition, and now that edition has arrived.This new Oxford edition, in two volumes, presents Miltons Latin text on the verso pages with a fresh English translation facing it on the rectos. The translation manages the difficult task of being close to Miltons austere Latin while being intelligible English. The text has been newly transcribed from the manuscript, and the manuscript itself was disbound and photographed for this project. The editorial introduction provides a thor- ough account of the history of the manuscript, while textual notes chart in minute detail the errors, hesitations, and revisions of the different scribes. The controversy over the author- ship of the work is not reopened: the editors (rightly, I think) regard that as having been settled (as far as any academic dispute is ever settled) by the publication in 2007 of the multi-authored study Milton and the Manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana. Rather, their attention is directed at providing an accurate text and translation, and illuminating Miltons working methods. …