The Literature of Lesbianism: A Historical Anthology from Ariosto to Stonewall Book

Since the Renaissance, countless writers have been magnetized by the notion of love between women. This anthology registers that fact in as encompassing and enlightening a way as possible. Terry Castle explores the emergence and transformation of the "idea of lesbianism:" its conceptual origins, how it has been transmitted, transformed and collectively embellished over the past five centuries. From Renaissance love poems to twentieth century novels, plays, and short stories, The Literature of Lesbianism brings together hundreds of literary works on the subject of female homosexuality. This is not an anthology of "lesbian writers." Nor is it simply a one-sided compendium of "positive" or "negative" images of lesbian experience. Both male and female authors are represented here and they display an astonishing and often unpredictable range of attitudes. Some excoriate female same-sex love; some eulogize it. Some are salacious or satiric; others sympathetic and confessional. Yet what comes across everywhere is just how visible -as a literary theme -"Sapphic love" has always been in Western literature. As Castle demonstrates, it is hardly the "taboo" or "forbidden" topic we sometimes assume it to be, but has in fact been a central preoccupation for many of our greatest writers, past and present. The selections are arranged chronologically. Included are some anonymous works -several published here for the first time -as well as numerous translations from the writers of antiquity (such as Sappho, Ovid, Martial, and Juvenal) whose rediscovery in the early Renaissance helped shape subsequent Western literary representations of female homosexuality.Read More