Table Of ContentSODOMETRIES
~
Renaissance
Texts,
Modern
Sexualities
FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW YORK 2010
17642-Sodometries_patches 11/30/09 1:12 PM Page iv
Copyright © 2010Fordham University Press
Previously published by Stanford University Press. © 1992by
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Goldberg, Jonathan.
Sodometries : Renaissance texts, modern sexualities / Jonathan Goldberg
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8232-3221-5(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. English literature—Early modern, 1500–1700—History and criticism.
2. Sodomy in literature. 3. Male homosexuality, in literature. 4. Sexual
orientation in literature. 5. Sodomy—Political aspects—United States—
History. 6. Homosexuality—Political aspects—United States—History.
7. Homophobia—United States—History. I. Title.
pr428.h66g6 2010
306.76'6—dc22
2009047716
The illustrations on the title page and the part title pages are excerpted from
Plate XXII of Theodore de Bry, Americae, Pars Quatra(1594). Reproduced by
permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Printed in the United States of America
12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1
First edition
for
Eve
Kosofsky
Sedgwick
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
d
VERSION OF the first part of Chapter 3 of Sodometries ap
peared in the South Atlantic Quarterly 88 (1989): 107-26 as "Colin
to Hobbinol: Spenser's Familiar Letters" and was reprinted in
Ronald Butters, John Clum, and Michael Moon, eds., Displacing
Homophobia (Duke University Press, 1989). An abbreviated ver
sion of Chapter 7 appeared under the same title in Andrew Parker,
Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger, eds., National
isms and Sexualities (Routledge, 1991). A portion of Chapter 6
appeared as "Sodomy in the New World: Anthropologies Old and
New" in Social Text 29 (1991): 46-56.
Parts of this book were delivered as lectures: I am particularly
grateful to Andrew Parker for a stimulating visit to Amherst
College (and to Marguerite Waller for her response to a version of
the Marlowe chapter on that occasion); to Jonathan Crewe, who
sponsored several trips to Tulsa University, not only to deliver
versions of the Marlowe and Shakespeare chapters, but also to
teach, along with Michael Moon, a graduate seminar on materials
related to the third part of this book. In that context, it is a
pleasure to recall the participants in that seminar (not least James
Crewe), as well as the company of Barbara Correll (who subse
quently has made it possible for me to deliver portions of this book
at Cornell) and the hospitality and conversation of Katharine
Crewe. To Michael Warner, I owe a visit to Rutgers, as well as the
chance to appear in Social Text; once again, I thank him for
Vtl
support and, again, have the pleasure of anticipating work of his
that will extend the scope and complexity of the arguments offered
Acknowl· in the pages that follow. Stephen Orgel made it possible for me to
edgments deliver versions of the Marlowe chapter at MLA and at a Stanford
Humanities Center conference; Marjorie Garber had a hand in
the latter event as well as issuing an invitation to speak at Harvard;
Thomas Roche had me to celebrate Spenser soo at Princeton,
where Anne Lake Prescott braved the word sodomy for the NEH
tape recorders; David Lee Miller gave me the chance to deliver the
same Spenser talk to his colleagues and students at Tuscaloosa,
and introduced me to Jillana Enteen, to whose work I look
forward; Geoffrey Harpham included me in a faculty seminar on
gay and lesbian studies at Tulane, and Rebecca Mark invited me
back to join her colleagues in their first gay studies conference.
Thanks to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Sex/Representation/Gender
series at Duke, I delivered versions of the Marlowe and Bradford
chapters; it is with pleasure that I recall the enthusiasm of Stanley
Fish and Jane Tompkins on those occasions, as well as some
friendly wrangling with Barbara Herrnstein Smith. The annual
Gay and Lesbian Conference has been hospitable to me as well,
and I am particularly grateful to Margaret Hunt for her encour
agement. Members of the English Institute in 1991 offered enthu
siasm and engagement when I presented materials drawn from the
opening and close of this book, and I thank Susan Stewart for
asking me to speak. I am grateful to Karen Newman and to David
Riggs, the readers of this book for Stanford University Press, and
moved by their generosity towards my work. They too have spon
sored visits of mine to Brown and Stanford. This is the place to
thank Helen Tartar for being a wonderfully supportive and im
mensely helpful editor.
I have tried out many of the arguments to be found in this book
in classes at Johns Hopkins: my undergraduate Shakespeare stu
dents have listened to lectures and, at times, offered valuable
resistance as well as evidence ofg ratifying persuasion; my graduate
Teaching Assistants have also served as necessary barometers of
my success. An undergraduate seminar that touched on much in
the third section of this book also proved an important teaching
Vt t t
and learning experience for me, not least because of the presence
of Maria Farland in that course. Other graduate students who
have been reading sixteenth-century literature with me for the Acknowl·
past couple of years have been extraordinary allies in the thinking edgments
of this book. Several are named in the notes below; without
making invidious comparisons among a group of superlative stu-
dents, I would be remiss ifl didn't acknowledge-with pleasure-
how much I have learned from Elizabeth Hewitt, T. Sean Hol-
land, Anthony Scott, and Jonathan Brody Kramnick.
It is with a group of friends with whom so much of my life has
been shared as I was writing this book that I would end this page,
thanking Michael Moon for the thousands of (e xtra)ordinary joys
of his companionship and support, and acknowledging how much
his work makes mine possible. Hal Sedgwick has smoothed any
number of paths, helped make decisions, and provided calm; he
can make restaurants appear in deserts. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
has often been the first reader of these pages and has never
despite the pressures and pleasures of a complicated and demand
ing life-stinted in her generous and acute responses to them. I
offer this book, however inadequate, as thanks. I wish I could
write a sentence sufficiently gorgeous to acknowledge her work,
her friendship, her courage, and her brilliance.
J.G.
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