Description
The go-to resource for understanding desire, same-sex and trans eroticism in Shakespeare's texts, as well as in stage performance and in textual criticism, this second edition features revisions to the original chapters and an additional 5 new chapters.
The plays and poems of Shakespeare overflow with sexual and erotic discourses, languages, and representations concerning eroticism and sex, and they display forms of embodiment that intersect with the erotic. This preoccupation with sex and desire often disrupts on page and stage the otherwise heavily regulated worlds of sexuality and desire in Shakespeare's society.
The updated chapters take stock of the ideas and arguments explored in queer Shakespeare scholarship since the first edition in 2017. Five new chapters expand the scope of the book and trace further lines of enquiry: queerness in stage performance, and in the original intersection between textual and trans analysis; queerness and race; queerness and critical disability studies in the narrative poetry, and trans theory of queer Shakespeare. Together with a new introduction, Queer Shakespeare expands the possibilities for teaching both Shakespeare and queer theory in all of its manifestations.
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors
A Note about the Text
Acknowledgments
Introduction to the second edition: Queer Shakespeare: desire, sexuality and embodiment. Goran Stanivukovic (Saint Mary's University, Canada)
PART I: QUEER TIME
1. 'Which is the worthiest love' in Two Gentlemen of Verona. David L. Orvis (Appalachian State University, USA)
2. Glass: The Sonnets' Desiring Object. John S. Garrison (Independent Scholar, USA)
3. The Sport of Asses: A Midsummer Night's Dream. Kirk Quinsland (Fordham University, USA)
4. Shakespeare's Sonnets and Beccadelli's Hermaphroditus. Ian Frederick Moulton (Arizona State University, USA)
PART II: QUEER LANGUAGE
5. The Queer Language of Size in Love's Labour's Lost. Valerie Billing (Central College, USA)
6. Locating Queerness in Cymbeline. Stephen Guy-Bray (The University of British Columbia, Canada)
7. Much Ado About Nothing and The Sound of Women's Desire. Holly Dugan (George Washington University, USA)
8. Queer Styles in Twelfth Night. Goran Stanivukovic, (Saint Mary's University, Canada)
PART III: QUEER NATURE
9. Queer Nature, or the Weather in Macbeth. Christine Varnado (Buffalo-State University of New York, USA)
10. Strange Insertions in The Merchant of Venice. Eliza Greenstadt† (Portland State University, USA)
11. Romeo and Juliet and the Promiscuous Seductions of Plague. Kathryn Schwarz (Vanderbilt University, USA)
12. Antisocial Procreation in Measure for Measure. Melissa E. Sanchez (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
PART IV: TRANS ANALYSIS
13. Male Femininity and Male-to-Female Crossdressing in Shakespeare's Plays and Poems. Simone Chess (Wayne State University, USA)
14. The Taming of the 'Lady' in The Shrew. Don Rodrigues (Old Dominion University, USA)
15. How Do You Solve a Problem Like Adonis?, James Yukiko Mulder (Bentley University, USA)
PART V: QUEER INTERSECTIONS
16. Queerness and Race in Shakespeare. Anita Raychawdhuri (Universitat de Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain)
17. Queer/Crip Ovidian (dis)inheritances in Venus and Adonis. Lee Hansen (Independent Scholar, UK)
18. The Limits of Queerness in Contemporary Performances of Shakespeare. Curtis Dunn (Independent Scholar, USA)
Afterword to the First Edition, Vin Nardizzi (University of British Columbia, Canada)
Bibliography
Index
Product details
| Published | 11 Jun 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 2nd |
| Extent | 400 |
| ISBN | 9781350527492 |
| Imprint | The Arden Shakespeare |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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