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Introduction 1 Notes Introduction 1. The heterosexuality of the “it” in Porter’s song is indicated by lines such as, “folks in Siam do it; think of Siamese twins” and “why ask if shad do it; waiter bring me shad roe.” Of course, the song leaves other options open: “some say in Boston even beans do it.” Noel Coward’s new lyrics for “Let’s Do It” pursue homosexual implications (see Hoare 288, 417). See also Clum. 2. For a crucial expansion on Foucault’s formulation, see Arnold Davidson. 3. See, among others, Bly, Bredbeck, DiGangi, Dollimore, Goldberg, Guy-Bray, Haggerty, Lanser, Masten, Orgel, Rambuss, Sinfield, Bruce Smith, Stallybrass, Traub, and James Grantham Turner; also see the collections edited by Goldberg, and Fradenburg and Freccero. 4. For historical work, see Abelove, Bray, Chauncy, Duberman et al., Halperin, Jonathan Ned Katz, and Trumbach; theoretical work includes Berlant, Bersani, Butler, Arnold Davidson, Rubin, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Michael Warner. 5. Trumbach argues forcefully for the appearance of modern heterosex- uality in the late seventeenth century. He is not concerned with representation or with cause. 6. See Traub, Renaissance, especially 265–270, and Rackin “Foreign Country.” In relation to the Middle Ages, see especially Schultz and Lochrie. 7. See Lochrie’s important discussion on the natural and the normal (Heterosyncracies, especially xxii–xxiii). 8. I am using “dominant” and “emergent” as Raymond Williams defines these terms. See Marxism 121–127. 9. This, of course, is not the only function that these rewritings served. See Dobson, Marsden (Re-Imagined ), Strier (Resistant), Taylor. 10. The discounting of rank as ultimately significant has also been true in relation to texts from the Middle Ages—see Schultz’s work particularly. 11. See de Grazia (“Ideology”) and Jones’s and Stallybrass’s work for the significance of possessions (property and objects) in relation to identity in the Renaissance. 184 Notes 12. The most powerful attempt to link the sexual license that appears in representations of the “lower stratum” to a general cultural celebra- tion of sex appears in James Grantham Turner’s work. Turner suggests that “The flourishing of libertine verse in the Restoration, brought to a gamy height by Rochester and his peers, had thus been prepared in the ‘festive-violent’ lower stratum, where obscene text and riotous gesture became equivalent, and transgressive verbal expression was ‘licenced’ by a ritual-performative context” (Libertines 55). I am sug- gesting quite a different relationship between early performance that lampoons and lambastes men for sexual misconduct and Restoration celebratory performance of sexual misconduct. The skimmington rites that Turner discusses (following the work of critics such as David Underdown) exist in an essentially sex-negative atmosphere. Their “celebrations” may exaggerate the penis and the vagina, but they do this in the service of punishment and humiliation. Rochester and his peers, in contrast, exaggerate for the purpose of celebration. 13. See, for an example of homogenization, Reay, who opens his textbook, Popular Cultures in England 1550–1750, with a chapter on “Sexualities.” 14. On Donne’s place within the homosocial imaginary, see Bach “(Re)placing John Donne.” 15. On the controversy, see Henderson and McManus. 16. See Laqueur, and see Paster for crucial qualifications of Laqueur’s thesis. See also Breitenberg and Schoenfeldt. 17. See Orgel and Fisher. 18. The first quotation comes from the Thomas Middleton play The Phoenix (C3v), the second from Middleton’s Blurt, Master-Constable (C4v). 19. The knight calls the jeweler’s wife “Revenue” and she calls him “Pleasure.” 20. The evidence Traub cites from women’s letters indicates that the English Renaissance allowed also for a very developed, unabashed love language between women (Renaissance 184–185). 21. See Orgel’s chapter 2 in Impersonations. See also Belsey’s Shakespeare. 22. See Hammond’s discussion of the overlap between the words “friend” and “lover” in English Renaissance texts. 23. On the category of service, see Burnett. 24. See Burnett and Dolan (Dangerous). 25. See “Axiomatic” in Epistemology (246–250). In the same piece, Sedgwick warns about assumptions that there is one thing called homosexuality: “an unfortunate side effect of this move [historicizing sexuality] has been to implicitly underwrite the notion that ‘homosexuality as we conceive of it today’ itself comprises a coherent definitional field rather than a space of overlapping, contradictory, and conflictual defi- nitional forces” (261). I take her point even though I would seem to be violating it when I keep writing about heterosexuality as if it is one Notes 185 thing that can be known. But I think that, unlike homosexuality—that thing or things that has been around for about a hundred years—which has never been hegemonic, the heterosexual imaginary is one know- able thing, because of its hegemonic force. This is certainly not to say that it isn’t contradictory—all hegemonies and ideologies are (think of American capitalism). It also is not to say that sex between a woman and a man is one knowable thing at all. See also Lochrie’s introduction to Heterosyncracies. 26. I am using “hegemony” in Gramsci’s sense. See his discussion of Croce (195). See also Raymond Williams’s elaboration (Marxism 108–114). Ziˇˇ zek uses, and I will be using, the term “apparatuses” following Althusser’s seminal formulation in his essay, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” 27. See Lochrie’s similar list, Heterosyncrasies xiii. 28. Each of the items in this list should have the implicit qualification “mainstream.” 29. Audre Lorde writes, “Traditionally, in american society, it is the members of oppressed, objectified groups who are expected to stretch out and bridge the gap between the actualities of our lives and the consciousness of our oppressor. For in order to survive, those of us for whom oppression is as American as apple pie have always had to be watchers, to become familiar with the language and manners of the oppressor, even sometimes adopting them for some illusion of protection” (114). 30. See Berlant’s point, “how many times have I asked my own students to explain why, when there are so many people, only one plot counts as ‘life’ (first comes love, then . .)?” (286). 31. On whiteness, see Dyer; on dominion, see Bach “Bearbaiting.” 32. That battle is taking place on all fronts today: welfare legislation, the child care issue, and more prosaically but perhaps as importantly in the representational realm of children’s magazines, television, and movies. 33. See Richlin’s work and Halperin’s response to that work (“Forgetting”) for the debate about the sexual picture in the classical world. 34. For the differences between marriage and heterosexuality in the Middle Ages, see Schultz’s work as well as Lochrie. This understand- ing of the historicity of marriage is filtering into general conscious- ness. See Shumway’s review in the Chronicle of Higher Education: “Frye’s argument about Greek comedy is that it’s a celebration of community, and that marriage is a rite of renewal. By the time you get to the 19th century, we no longer think of marriage and weddings especially as having that function. They have become deeply personal. There is some evidence from historical studies that, whereas in earlier periods, weddings were almost always a celebration open to the community, they became increasingly private in the 19th century.” 186 Notes 35. On Othello, see chapter 5. See Bergeron. 36. See Masten 71. 37. For one example, see Burton’s dependence throughout The Anatomy of Melancholy on Augustine. 38. Burton, a devout Protestant vicar and rector as well as author, in his long address to the reader that prefaces The Anatomy of Melancholy, describes a perfect Protestant state in which “Murder, adultery, shall be punished by death” (105). (He is following Alfred’s laws.) When Parliament took power in the Interregnum and instituted a Protestant government, it passed the Adultery Act of May 1650. This act, instituting the death penalty for adultery, may have been an attack on the Ranters. 39. See also Rubin, “Traffic,” and Goldberg, Sodometries 69–70 on the issue of cultural differences. 40. See Marxism and Literature, when he used the terms “dominant,” “residual,” and “emergent.” 41. McKeon does a nice job discussing the conflicts between historians on the presence or absence of the nuclear family in the English Renaissance (Origins). See also my “Homosocial Imaginary.” What is most significant for the arguments I am advancing in this book is that no literature in the period shows us anything like a modern nuclear family. 42. Left out of this list are all the possibilities with all the animals, all the possibilities with objects, and whatever else people might think of. See Sedgwick, “Axiomatic.” 43. Again, see McKeon on nobility and virtu (Origins). Of course, Christianity also challenged this belief. This idea was continually under assault in the Middle Ages. 44. See McKeon for an analysis of the historical process by which “regard for status . is subsumed under and accommodated to the more dominant and insistent regard for financial income and occupational identity” (McKeon, Origins 163). Bray describes the material contribu- tions to this shift: changes in the architecture of great houses and shifts in where men slept (Friend 210). 45. See Sommerville for the collective effect of these on English religious culture. 46. See Bray’s comment on the abandonment of traditional friendship: “The Enlightenment put aside this traditional ethic with contempt and put in its place a Fraternity that it claimed would be ‘universal,’ ‘rational,’ even ‘scientific’ ” (Friend 304). 47. When later English Renaissance people looked to their monarchs for examples, they saw a chaste queen (Elizabeth) and a king with little interest in women ( James I).
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