Title: Before the closet
First published: 1998
Description: Allen J. Frantzen challenges the long accepted 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. Frantzen shows that in early medieval Europe, the Church did not tolerate same-sex acts, in fact it was an age before people recognized the existence—or the possibility—of the "closet."

With its ambitious scope and elegant style, Before the Closet sets same-sex relations in Anglo-Saxon sources in relation to the sexual themes of contemporary opera, dance, and theatre. Frantzen offers a comprehensive analysis of sources from the seventh to the twelfth century and traces Anglo-Saxon same-sex behavior through the age of Chaucer and into the Renaissance.
Subjects: Anglo-Saxons in literature, Beowulf, English literature, Gay men in literature, History, History and criticism, Homosexuality and literature, Lesbians in literature, Love in literature, English literature, history and criticism, old english, ca. 450-1100, LGBTQ history, Homosexuality, Literature, English
Places: England
People: Tony Kushner
Time periods: Old English, ca. 450-1100
LC classification: PR179.H66 F73 1998