1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910791666403321

Autore

Guy-Bray Stephen

Titolo

Against reproduction : where Renaissance texts come from / / Stephen Guy-Bray

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Toronto, [Canada] ; ; Buffalo, [New York] : , : University of Toronto Press, , 2009

©2009

ISBN

1-4426-8581-6

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (238 p.)

Disciplina

822.309

Soggetti

English drama - Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600 - History and criticism

English drama - 17th century - History and criticism

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: the works of art in the age of human reproduction -- Marriages -- Seductions -- Beginnings.

Sommario/riassunto

The idea of the author as parent and the text as child is a pervasive metaphor throughout Renaissance poetry and drama. In Against Reproduction, Stephen Guy-Bray sets out to systematically interrogate this common trope, and to consider the limits of using heterosexual reproduction to think of textual creation.Through an analysis of Renaissance texts by poets and playwrights including William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and John Milton, Guy-Bray argues that the reproductive metaphor was only one of the ways in which writers presented their own literary production. Their uses of sexual language reveal that these authors were surprisingly ambivalent about their own writing. Guy-Bray suggests that they often presented their work in such a way as to feminize themselves and to associate the writing process with shame and abjection.Offering fresh perspectives on well-known texts, Against Reproduction is an accessible and compelling book that will affect the study of both Renaissance literature and queer theory.