Description: Valerie Traub analyzes the representation of female-female love, desire, and eroticism in a range of early modern discourses, including poetry, drama, visual arts, pornography, and medicine. Contrary to the silence ascribed to lesbianism in the Renaissance, Traub argues that the early modern period witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of representations of such desire. As a contribution to the history of sexuality and to feminist and queer theory, the book addresses current theoretical preoccupations through the lens of historical inquiry.
Brief description: Valerie Traub is Professor of English and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and author of numerous works on gay/lesbian studies, including the book Desire and Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespearean Drama and coeditor of Feminist Readings in Early Modern Culture: Emerging Subjects.
Review Quotes: "Traub's compellingly argued study contributes significantly to early modern scholarship not only on sexuality, but also on gender, anatomical science, marriage and the family, poetic and dramatic texts, classical mythology, women writers and royal icongraphy ... [S]he has undeniably given us a wealth of knowledge about its history and a model of scholarship for interpreting its significance that cannot be ignored." Seventeenth-Century News