{"product_id":"the-shapes-of-fancy-reading-for-queer-desire-in-early-modern-literature-paperback-softback-9781517907778","title":"The Shapes of Fancy; Reading for Queer Desire in Early Modern Literature (Paperback \/ softback) 9781517907778","description":"\u003cfont face=\"Georgia\"\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"6\"\u003eThe Shapes of Fancy\u003c\/font\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003cfont size=\"5\"\u003eReading for Queer Desire in Early Modern Literature\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"4\"\u003eChristine Varnado (Author)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e9781517907778\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003ePaperback \/ softback, published 5 May 2020\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e328 pages, 7\u003cbr\u003e21.6 x 14 x 3.8 cm, 0.432 kg\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Shapes of Fancy\u003c\/i\u003e pursues an innovative expansion of the lexicon of queer desire. Christine Varnado forges links between early modern and contemporary thinkers, and she engages a constellation of affective modes, from mediation and consumption to paranoia and melancholia. Her supple analyses illuminate the intricate, often unexpected vectors, artifacts, and afterlives of erotic connection.\"-Kathryn Schwarz, Vanderbilt University\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Christine Varnado’s book makes a surprising and incisive intervention into early modern studies. In its queerest moments, \u003ci\u003eThe Shapes of Fancy\u003c\/i\u003e argues for a capacious theory of desire, expanding scholarly understanding of sexuality in the past to include forgotten, ambivalent, and challenging forms of pleasure.\"-Holly Dugan, The George Washington University\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"An incredibly useful touchstone for queer studies.\"-\u003ci\u003eModern Philology \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This powerful book brings important and fresh insight to the literature.\" -\u003ci\u003eCHOICE\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eExploring forms of desire unaccounted for in previous histories of sexuality\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 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, \u003ci\u003eThe Shapes of Fancy\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStarting with the question of how and why readers seek traces of desire in texts from bygone times and places, \u003ci\u003eThe Shapes of Fancy\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis 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, \u003ci\u003eThe Shapes of Fancy\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eContents\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIntroduction: Reading for Desire\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. Getting Used, and Liking It: Erotic Instrumentality and the Go-Between\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2. Everything That Moves: Promiscuous Fancy and Carnival Longing\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3. It Takes One to Know One: Paranoid Suspicion and the Witch Hunt\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4. Lost Worlds, Lost Selves: Queer Colonial Melancholia\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eConclusion: The Persistence of Fancy\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAcknowledgments\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNotes\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIndex\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c\/font\u003e","brand":"Univ Of Minnesota Press","offers":[{"title":"Brand New","offer_id":52743748714776,"sku":"9781517907778","price":22.59,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/freshlyprintedbooks.co.uk\/products\/the-shapes-of-fancy-reading-for-queer-desire-in-early-modern-literature-paperback-softback-9781517907778","provider":"Freshly Printed Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}