I don't think too many of us these days are either squeamish or reluctant
to remember that sex takes place outside the imaginary--except, I suppose,
imaginary sex. The problem, for some of us, is not just that sometimes
sexual orientation or behavior doesn't seem very relevant to a given text,
it's that we don't actually know, and cannnot know, what most people were
actually doing. If asked to bet, I'd wager that Marlowe, Barnfield, and
Anthony Bacon had engaged in some sort of same-sex sex, but damned if I
could prove it or say exactly what it was they were doing. I'm more than
confident that men like Sidney and Donne had pre-marital liasons, but
again--I don't know how or with whom. It isn't that I don't care--I have
as much prurient interest in other people's lives as the next woman--it's
that I can't *know* and that knowing is probably not necessary for
understanding the poetry. It is also the case--and this just seems a part
of human reality too--that how we feel and act sexually, and especially
how we write about sex and love, is inflected by the language and culture
into which we are born, and that includes reading Virgil, say, or seeing
Sex in the City, or thinking that young boys are beautiful but a man must
grow up and produce more little citizens for the Athenian army. I'd
reassure Shirley that lots of us know people had bodie and desires as well
as classsical educations, but the classical education is still evident
after all these years and the actual bodies and desires are usually,
although not always, beyond excavation. Anne Prescott.
On Mon, 16 Oct 2000, shirley sharon-zisser wrote:
> At 13:29 16/10/00 -0400, you wrote:
> >> I think Prof.
> >> Hamilton was only talking about sexual *biography* of our authors;
> >> certainly his interpretations of Lust in IV.vii exhibit no squeamishness
> >> about sex in *literature.*
> >
> >I see; so it is fine to talk about sex in Renaissance literature so long
> as we can reassure=delude ourselves (and our students' parents) we are
> safely in the imaginary. Not surprising.
>
>
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