The Shapes of Fancy
Release on 2020-05-05 | by Christine Varnado

... instead it generates a queer kinship between women that reaches beyond death.20 The pair of votaresses here are ... of desire figured as fancy, through which we are reminded that heterosexual generation is not the only kind—and that ...

The Shapes of Fancy
  • Author: Christine Varnado
  • Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
  • ISBN: 9781452961637
  • Category: Literary Criticism
  • Page: 328
  • View: 548

Exploring forms of desire unaccounted for in previous histories of sexuality What can the Renaissance tell us at our present moment about who and what is “queer,” as well as the political consequences of asking? In posing this question, The Shapes of Fancy offers a powerful new method of accounting for ineffable and diffuse forms of desire, mining early modern drama and prose literature to describe new patterns of affective resonance. Starting with the question of how and why readers seek traces of desire in texts from bygone times and places, The Shapes of Fancy demonstrates a practice of critical attunement to the psychic and historical circulations of affect across time within texts, from texts to readers, and among readers. Closely reading for uncharted desires as they recur in early modern drama, witchcraft pamphlets, and early Atlantic voyage narratives and demonstrating how each is structured by qualities of secrecy, impossibility, and excess, Christine Varnado follows four “shapes of fancy”: the desire to be used to others’ ends; indiscriminate, bottomless appetite; paranoid self-fulfilling suspicion; and melancholic longings for impossible transformations and affinities. These affective dynamics go awry in atypical and perverse ways. In other words, argues Varnado, these modes of feeling are recognizable on the page or stage as “queer” because of how, and not by whom, they are expressed. This new theorization of desire expands the notion of queerness in literature, decoupling the literary trace of queerness from the binary logics of same-sex versus opposite-sex and normative versus deviant that have governed early modern sexuality studies. Providing a set of methods for analyzing affect and desire in texts from any period, The Shapes of Fancy stages an impassioned defense of the inherently desirous nature of reading, making a case for readerly investment and identification as vital engines of meaning making and political insight.

More Books:

Fancy That
Language: en
Pages: 300

Fancy That

Authors: Dennis Shay
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2008-03-01 - Publisher: Lulu.com

Benjamin Roberts is a loser in life, then on a whim he buys a home computer though he knows nothing about computers and can't even type. Therein, he meets Max in cyberspace who offers him fame, fortune, and the woman of his dreams, asking only for Ben's friendship in return.
Fancy That
Language: en
Pages: 46

Fancy That

Authors: Sylvia Woody
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-01-21 - Publisher: WestBow Press

This is the story of Fancy, a five-pound Yorkshire terrier who brought love, joy, and encouragement to many bedridden nursing home patients, while her mistress (the author) received God’s grace and comfort in her time of greatest need. “... delightful, inspiring ... Together, an extraordinary dog, and a devoted mistress,
Lectures on the Science and Art of Education
Language: en
Pages: 386

Lectures on the Science and Art of Education

Authors: Joseph Payne
Categories: Education
Type: BOOK - Published: 1880 - Publisher:

Books about Lectures on the Science and Art of Education
A gordian shape of dazzling hue
Language: en
Pages: 126

A gordian shape of dazzling hue

Authors: Greta Colombani
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-09-11 - Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Serpent symbolism plays an important role in Keats’s rich animal imagery both on a quantitative level and on a qualitative one. Through images of dazzling, twisted, suffocating snakes Keats gives form to some of his most important ideas as well as anxieties about poetic creation. In particular, snakes convey the
The Complete Works of Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Language: en
Pages: 11908

The Complete Works of Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Authors: Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2019-09-06 - Publisher: e-artnow

e-artnow presents to you this meticulously edited Mary Elizabeth Braddon collection: Novels: The Trail of the Serpent Lady Audley's Secret Aurora Floyd The Captain of the Vulture John Marchmont's Legacy Eleanor's Victory Henry Dunbar The Doctor's Wife Birds of Prey Charlotte's Inheritance Run to Earth Fenton's Quest The Lovels of