A provocative essay collection that theorizes the Renaissance through the lens of kink.
The Kinky Renaissance is a groundbreaking collection of essays that explore kink as a theoretical analytic, a historical formation, and an aesthetic mode. The essays in this work expand the sexual archive and its lexicon by introducing new vocabularies to familiar sexual scenes in early modern literature and culture and by bringing lesser-known scenes to bear on the study of sexuality in the period. Providing a capacious theory of sexuality and historical precedents for contemporary kinky practices, The Kinky Renaissance explores the erotic potential of early modern literature and pauses over various kinks nestled between and beside them. The collection boldly argues for a broader concept of a kinky Renaissance—one which reorients the terms of both the history of sexuality and queer theory more broadly.
Introduction . A Renaissance of Kink, by Joseph Gamble and Gillian Knoll
Part One: Revising Critical Narratives
Chapter 1. “Mishapen Stuffe”: Pleasure and Restraint in Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, by James Yukiko Mulder
Chapter 2. Cuckold Communities in the Kinky Early Modern, by Erika Lyn Carbonara
Chapter 3. Kinky Herrick, by Gina Filo
Part Two: Sexual Ethics
Chapter 4. The Taming of the Shrew and Sex “in the midst of the street,” by Erin E. Kelly
Chapter 5. “What pretty new device”: Bondage and Liminality in Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Maid’s Tragedy, by Nathaniel C. Leonard
Chapter 6. Shakespeare’s (Into) Race Play, by Kirk Quinsland
Part Three: Representational Quandaries and Kinky Solutions
Chapter 7. Early Modern Money Shots, by Beatrice Bradley
Chapter 8. Fletcher’s Golden Showers, by Heather Frazier
Chapter 9. Pandora, Kneeling, by Gillian Knoll
Conclusion. Aftercare, by Christine Varnado
