Intimacy and Sexuality in the Age of Shakespeare

James Bromley is Assistant Professor of English at Miami University. He has published essays on intimacy, sexual practice and Renaissance literature in Early Modern Literary Studies, Studies in Philology and Modern Philology. He is the winner of the 2011 Martin Stevens Award for Best New Essay in Early Drama Studies from the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society.

• Introduction: interiority, futurity, and affective relations in Renaissance literature; 1. Intimacy and narrative closure in Christopher Marlowe's Hero and Leander; 2. A funny thing happened on the way to the altar: the anus, marriage, and narrative in Shakespeare; 3. Social status and the intimacy of masochistic sexual practice in Beaumont and Fletcher and Middleton; 4. Nuns and nationhood: intimacy in convents in Renaissance drama; 5. Female homoeroticism, race, and public forms of intimacy in the works of Lady Mary Wroth; Epilogue: invitation to a queer life.

'One relishes the way in which Bromley pursues his arguments … via texts other than the usual suspects. And when Bromley does now and again take up some of the more expected literary cases for a study of early modern intimacy (and its discontents), he succeeds in making those works look different. This book is well informed regarding the most pertinent critical debates of the moment in sexuality studies.' Richard Rambuss, Brown University, Rhode Island