LESBIANISM AND HOMOSEXUALITY IN EARLY MODERN SPAIN
Literature and Theater in Context
Edited by María José Delgado, co-edited by Alain Saint-Saëns
ISBN 1-889431-53-2
$49.95
Preface (in French) by Alain Saint-Saëns
Prefacio y Introducción (in Spanish) by María-José Delgado
A fundamental historical essay by the famous French historian, Alain Saint-Saëns, specialist of sexuality and gender history, and a collection of fifteen articles by some of the best specialists of gay/lesbian/queer studies. For the first time, lesbianism and homosexuality are analyzed through literary discourse and playwrights of the time, and put in the context of daily life and historical background.
COMMENTS AND REVIEWS:
- "Delgado and Saint-Saëns have collected articles from the best scholars in the field so as to provide a whole tapestry of approaches and views on this new and exciting field of research."
Frederick A. de Armas,
Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature, Penn State University.
- "Lesbianism and Homosexuality in Early Modern Spain joins an all too brief list of works dealing with same-sex desire and the Golden Age...Themes and theoretical approaches of the volume are far ranging, and it offers a useful balance between the different genres studied, gay and lesbian topics, male and female authors, and junior and senior scholars of the Golden Age -- with outstanding contributions by José Cartagena-Calderón, Adrienne Martín, Robert Ter Horst, and the volume´s editors. Among the best is an essay by Daniel Heiple, in whose memory the volume is dedicated...To its credit, the volume provides an irrefutable argument against conservative disavowals of the interpretive significance of same-sex desire, particularly in drama of the period...We can thank the editors for the setting the stage for others who wish to pursue queer studies, drama, and the early modern period in Spain and Latin America."
Sidney Donnell, Bulletin of the Comediantes, Vol. 54, No. 1 (2002).
Alain Saint-Saëns is Professeur d'Histoire Moderne, Agrégé d'Histoire from the University of Paris-Sorbonne (France), Docteur (1990) and Docteur Habilité (1996) from the University of Toulouse (France), and a former Fellow of the French Institute for Advanced Spanish Studies in Madrid (Spain). He was a Scholar-in-Residence at Trent University (Canada), and has taught at the universities of Tulane (USA), Toledo (Spain), and Rennes (France). Formerly Chair of the History Department at the Dowling College of New York for three years, Alain Saint-Saëns is Director of University Press of the South and Presses Universitaires du Nouveau Monde in New Orleans, USA.
María José Delgado is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Capital University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 1993. Her publications and research interests include feminist and lesbian approaches to Spanish Golden Age letters, particularly the works of Ana Caro and María de Zayas y Sotomayor.
María José Delgado (right) and her lover