Friendship and Queer Theory in the Renaissance

John S. Garrison is Assistant Professor of English at Carroll University, USA, where he specializes in Renaissance literature, gender studies, and the classical tradition. He has been a recent recipient of fellowships from the Folger Shakespeare Library and the American Philosophical Society.

• Preface: Towards an Increased Understanding of Friendship 1. "The Sum of Perfect Amity": Friendship Networks at the Inns of Court 2. We Are the Jasons, We Have Won the Fleece": Prodigious Amity in The Merchant of Venice and Troilus and Cressida 3. "In a Joint and Corporate Voice": The All-Too-Friendly Households in Arden of Faversham and Timon of Athens 4. "All Those Friends That I Thought Buried": Patronage and Multiplicity in Lanyer’s Salve Deus and Shakespeare’s Sonnets 5. "This Host of Friends": The Promise of Plurality in Milton's Epitaphium Damonis and Paradise Lost Afterword: Friendship and The Tempest's Working Utopia

"A profoundly worthwhile aim which challenges the potentially anachronistic application to early modern society of contemporary idealised, dyadic conceptions of friendship and love…This book is particularly admirable for the ways in which it deploys and engages with queer theory…Dr Garrison performs the impressive task of providing a genuinely original critical viewpoint on the sonnets, and I would go so far as to say that his treatment of Lanyer’s dedicatory verses should be essential reading for anyone working on, or teaching, Salve Deus." --Kit Heyam, University of Leeds, The Seventeenth Century"This book makes significant contributions to our understanding of the Renaissance idea of friendship, offering fresh and imaginative readings of major authors from Shakespeare to Milton." – Tom MacFaul, University of Oxford, UK"Garrison's theoretical framework that unites queer theory with New Historicism promises richer and riper readings in the ensuing years." --Amritesh Singh, The Year's Work in English Studies