Before the Closet
Subtitle: Same-Sex Love from Beowulf to Angels in America
By: Allen J. Frantzen.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 369
Subjects: Kushner, Tony; Beowulf; English literature -- Old English, ca. 450-1100 -- History and criticism; Homosexuality and literature -- England -- History; Anglo-Saxons in literature; Lesbians in literature; Gay men in literature; Love in literature
Description: Since the publication of John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, historians have accepted the view that the early Middle Ages tolerated and even fostered same-sex relations and that intolerance of homosexuality developed only late in the medieval period. In this extraordinary study, Allen J.

Frantzen challenges this long-held belief, showing that the early medieval Church did not tolerate same-sex acts, and, furthermore, that men and women during this time who preferred homosexual relations pursued their desires in spite of official sanctions. The early medieval period was, Frantzen argues, an age before people recognized the existence - or the possibility - of the "closet."
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [309]-358) and index.
Table of contents: title: Acknowledgments
pagenum: ix; label: Introduction
title: Straightforward
pagenum: 1; label: Part One
title: Trouser Roles and Transvestites; label: 1
title: What's Love Got to Do with It?
pagenum: 33; label: 2
title: Kiss and Tell: Anglo-Saxon Tales of Manly Men and Women
pagenum: 68; label: Part Two
title: The Anglo-Saxons; label: 3
title: Surveying Same-Sex Relations in the Early Middle Ages
pagenum: 111; label: 4
title: The Sociology of Sex in Anglo-Saxon Laws and Penitentials
pagenum: 138; label: 5
title: The Shadow of Sodom: Same-Sex Relations in Pastoral Prose and Poetry
pagenum: 184; label: Part Three
title: From Angles to Angels; label: 6
title: Sex and the Anglo-Saxons from the Norman Conquest to the Renaissance
pagenum: 231; label: 7
title: Alla, Angli, and Angels in America
pagenum: 264; label: Afterword
title: Me and My Shadows
pagenum: 293; title: Notes
pagenum: 309; title: Index
pagenum: 359