Queer Italia gathers essays on Italian literature and film, medieval to modern. The volume's chronological organization reflects its intention to define a queer tradition in Italian culture. While fully cognizant of the theoretical risks inherent in trans-historicizing sexuality, the contributors to this volume share an interest in probing the multi-form dynamics of sexual desires in Italian texts through the centuries. The volume aims not to promote the mistaken notion of a single homosexuality through history. Rather, these essays together upset and undo the equally misguided assumption of an omnipresent heterosexuality through time by uncovering the various, complex workings of desire in texts from all periods. Somewhat paradoxically, a kind of queer canon results. These essays open a much-needed critical space in the Italian tradition wherein fixed definitions of sexual identity collapse. Queer Italia is the first and only work of its kind in Italian criticism. As such, it will be of interest to a wide audience of Italianists, medieval to modern, and queer cultural theorists.

Reviews

'In conclusion, it is to be hoped that this book will circulate beyond scholars primarily interested in gender studies and Italian history because of its demonstration of just how fruitful queer criticism can be in contested areas of culture.' - Mary P. Wood, European History Quarterly

About the author

GARY P. CESTARO is Associate Professor of Italian language and literature at DePaul University in Chicago.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: Queer Italia: Same-Sex Desire in Italian Literature and Film
Authors: Gary P. Cestaro
Series Title: Italian and Italian American Studies
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403982599
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts Collection, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Softcover ISBN: 978-0-312-24026-4Published: 13 August 2004
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4039-8259-9Published: 22 July 2004
Series ISSN: 2635-2931
Series E-ISSN: 2635-294X
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VIII, 242
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Screen Studies, European History, Gender Studies, History of Italy, Literature, general, Modern History

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Queer Italia: Same-Sex Desire in Italian Literature and Film

Overview

Access this book

Other ways to access

Table of contents (13 chapters)

Front Matter

Introduction: Queer Italia: Same-Sex Desire in Italian Literature and Film

The Dead Sea of Sodomy: Giordano da Pisa on Men Who Have Sex With Men

Bibbiena’s Closet: Interpretation and the Sexual Culture of a Renaissance Papal Court

Knots of Desire: Female Homoeroticism in Orlando furioso 25

ACTing UP in the Renaissance:The Case of Benvenuto Cellini

“Nature is a Mother Most Sweet”: Homosexuality in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Italian Libertinism

Tra(ns)vesting Gender and Genre in Flaminio Scala’s Il (finto) marito

Beauty and the Beast: Lesbians in Literature and Sexual Science from the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Centuries

Desire and Disavowal in Liliana Cavani’s “German Trilogy”

Adapting to Heterocentricity: The Film Versions of Umberto Saba’s Ernesto and Giorgio Bassani’s The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles

Reluctantly Queer: In Search of the Homoerotic Novel in Twentieth-Century Italian Fiction

Secret Wounds:The Bodies of Fascism in Giorgio Bassani’s Dietro la porta

Transitive Gender and Queer Performance in the Novels of Mario Mieli and Vittorio Pescatori

Back Matter

Keywords

About this book

Reviews

About the author

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us

Navigation