Queer Italia: Same-Sex Desire in Italian Literature and Film

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

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2. Introduction: Queer Italia: Same-Sex Desire in Italian Literature and Film

   • Gary P. Cestaro

   Pages 1-17

3. The Dead Sea of Sodomy: Giordano da Pisa on Men Who Have Sex With Men

   • Bernard Schlager

   Pages 19-34

4. Bibbiena’s Closet: Interpretation and the Sexual Culture of a Renaissance Papal Court

   • Michael Wyatt

   Pages 35-53

5. Knots of Desire: Female Homoeroticism in Orlando furioso 25

   • Mary-Michelle DeCoste

   Pages 55-69

6. ACTing UP in the Renaissance:The Case of Benvenuto Cellini

   • Margaret A. Gallucci

   Pages 71-82

7. “Nature is a Mother Most Sweet”: Homosexuality in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Italian Libertinism

   • Giovanni Dall’Orto

   Pages 83-104

8. Tra(ns)vesting Gender and Genre in Flaminio Scala’s Il (finto) marito

   • Rosalind Kerr

   Pages 105-116

9. Beauty and the Beast: Lesbians in Literature and Sexual Science from the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Centuries

   • Daniela Danna

   Pages 117-132

10. Desire and Disavowal in Liliana Cavani’s “German Trilogy”

    • Áine O’Healy

    Pages 133-151

11. Adapting to Heterocentricity: The Film Versions of Umberto Saba’s Ernesto and Giorgio Bassani’s The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles

    • William Van Watson

    Pages 153-171

12. Reluctantly Queer: In Search of the Homoerotic Novel in Twentieth-Century Italian Fiction

    • Sergio Parussa

    Pages 173-186

13. Secret Wounds:The Bodies of Fascism in Giorgio Bassani’s Dietro la porta

    • Derek Duncan

    Pages 187-205

14. Transitive Gender and Queer Performance in the Novels of Mario Mieli and Vittorio Pescatori

    • Marco Pustianaz

    Pages 207-235

15. Back Matter

    Pages 237-242

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Queer Italia gathers essays on Italian literature and film, medieval to modern. The volume's chronological organization reflects its intention to define a queer tradition in Italian culture. While fully cognizant of the theoretical risks inherent in trans-historicizing sexuality, the contributors to this volume share an interest in probing the multi-form dynamics of sexual desires in Italian texts through the centuries. The volume aims not to promote the mistaken notion of a single homosexuality through history. Rather, these essays together upset and undo the equally misguided assumption of an omnipresent heterosexuality through time by uncovering the various, complex workings of desire in texts from all periods. Somewhat paradoxically, a kind of queer canon results. These essays open a much-needed critical space in the Italian tradition wherein fixed definitions of sexual identity collapse. Queer Italia is the first and only work of its kind in Italian criticism. As such, it will be of interest to a wide audience of Italianists, medieval to modern, and queer cultural theorists.

• essay
• film
• gender
• history
• Interpretation
• Renaissance

'In conclusion, it is to be hoped that this book will circulate beyond scholars primarily interested in gender studies and Italian history because of its demonstration of just how fruitful queer criticism can be in contested areas of culture.' - Mary P. Wood, European History Quarterly

GARY P. CESTARO is Associate Professor of Italian language and literature at DePaul University in Chicago.

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