Gay and Lesbian Poetry: An Anthology from Sappho to Michelangelo / Edition 1

by James J. Wilhelm

Overview

First published in 1995. This anthology focuses on European languages, but also includes Arabic and Hebrew poetry of medieval Spain, arranged chronologically and accompanied by commentary about the poets' lives and work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815318866
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/01/1995
Series:	Garland Reference Library of the Humanities , #1874
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	342
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Section I 3 CLASSICAL GREEK LITERATURE Chapter 1 Sappho (ca. 630-ca. 580 b.c.) Chapter 2 Early M ale Lyric Poets Chapter 3 Theocritus and the Pastoral Tradition Chapter 4 Strato of Sardis Musa Puerilis The Boyish Muse Section II CLASSICAL LATIN LITERATURE Chapter 5 The Lyric: Catullus , Horace , and Tibullus Chapter 6 Vergil Chapter 7 Ovid Chapter 8 Satire : Martial, Juvenal , and Petronius Section III MEDIEVAL LATIN LITERATURE Chapter 9 A.D. 300-1000 Chapter 10 A.D. 100-1300 Chapter 11 Anonymous Poems from Later Manuscripts Section IV ARABIC POETRY Chapter 12 Medieval Spanish Selections Section V HEBREW POETRY Chapter 13 Medieval Spanish Selections Section VI LATE MEDIEVAL VERNACULAR LITERATURE to 1400 Chapter 14 The trobairitz Bietris de Romans (ca. e a r l y 1200s)Chapter 15 Dante Alighieri (1265- 1321 ) Chapter 16 Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1341- 1400) Section VII ITALIAN RENAISSANCE LITERATURE TO MICHELANGELO Chapter 17 Selections from 1400 to 1550

Editorial Reviews

"Amid much blather about the alrightnik Western Literary Canon, child porn, and sexopolitical correctness (mostly neoconservative, lesser on the left), here's an old Clasical tradition long censored and banished from academics, re-emerged into intlligent light: a heroic humorous homoerotic counterculture live from Sappho to Plato & Vergil, thru Medieval Latin, Arabic, Hebrew and provincial languages, up thru Renaissance to Michelangelo. It gives courage to post Whitmanic contemporaries who've come out of the Industrial Age closet." — Allen Ginsberg

From the Publisher

Rutgers medievalist Wilhelm's ambitious survey collects European homoerotic poetry from 7th century B.C.E. Greece through the Italian Renaissance. Though Dante, Chaucer, and others deploying gay characters are included, as are a scattering of antihomosexual polemicists, the voice of these poems is typically a mature gay man (Sappho is one of but a few women represented), the object a smooth-cheeked youth. Selections from medieval Arabic and Hebrew poetry provide some of this anthology's most disarming readinge.g., Imn Shuhaid's "he passed me in a herd of deer, a smiling moon with lucky teeth"as well as evidencing the improbable license apparently then possible under Islamic rule. Though generally capable, the translators sometimes resort to anachronisms (a calculator in a Juvenal satire?) and contemporary subculture argot to mixed effect. And aside from brief introductions to each section and to individual poets, the annotations are minimaltoo minimal, perhaps, for many a lay reader without a literary dictionary immediately at hand. For more scholarly collections.Thomas Tavis, San Francisco P.L.

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