Abstract
Ovid’s summary in Metamorphoses 10 of the narrative of Ganymede, the beautiful boy carried away to the heavens by Jupiter, is very brief, and yet from this, and other classical versions of the tale, Ganymede becomes one of the most enduring and popular mythological characters in early modern literary reference. As explored below, the most popular utilisation of Ganymede in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England is in relation to the version of the myth which stresses the sexual relationship between Ganymede and Jupiter.
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Notes
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume One (1979), trans. Robert Hurley (London: Penguin, 1990)
Alan Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England (London: Gay Men’s Press, 1982)
Gregory W. Bredbeck, Sodomy and Interpretation: Marlowe to Milton (New York: Cornell University Press, 1991)
Bruce R. Smith, Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare’s England: A Cultural Poetics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)
Jonathan Goldberg, Sodometries: Renaissance Texts, Modern Sexualities (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992)
Stephen Orgel, Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
Mario DiGangi, The Homoerotics of Early Modem Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
James Knowles, ‘Sexuality: A Renaissance Category?’ in A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture, ed. Michael Hattaway (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2000), pp. 674–89
David M. Halperin, How to Do the History of Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)
Valerie Traub, The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modem England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Valerie Traub, Desire and Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespearean Drama (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 106.
Judith C. Brown, Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), Introduction, pp. 3–20. Brown records four French cases, two in Germany, one in Switzerland, one in the Netherlands and one in Italy, in the ‘hundreds if not thousands’ of cases of homosexuality tried by lay and ecclesiastical courts in medieval and early modern Europe, p. 6. England is without mention. Valerie Traub, The Renaissance of Lesbianism. Traub identifies one charge of female-female sodomy in 1625, and like Brown records a more widespread tendency in Europe, especially in France (pp. 42–4).
Stephen Orgel, ‘Gendering the Crown’ in Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture, ed. Margreta de Grazia, Maureen Quilligan, and Peter Stallybrass (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 133–65, (p. 161).
Williams, Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 56.
John Marston, The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion’s Image and Certaine Satyres (London, 1598), p. 52. Emphasis added.
See David M. Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality And Other Essays on Greek Love (New York: Routledge, 1990)
K.J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (London: Duckworth, 1979).
Henry Reynolds, Mythomystes: Wherein a short survey is taken of the Nature and Value of True Poesie, and depth of the Ancients above our Moderne Poets (London, 1632), pp. 19–20.
Thomas Bancroft, Two bookes of epigrammes, and epitaphs (London, 1639), Sig. B2r.
Abraham Fraunce, ‘Amyntas Pastorall’, The Countesse of Pembroke’s Yvychurch (London, 1591). Part 1, ‘The fifth Acte, the Second Scene’, p. 78.
Christopher Middleton, The Historie of Heaven (London, 1596) 11. 655–8, Sig. D4v.
George Chapman, The Whole Works of Homer … His Iliads and Odysses (London, 1616). ‘The XX Booke of Homer’s Iliads’ 11. 232–4, p. 282; Sandys, note to 11. 756, p. 517.
Henry Peacham, ‘Crimina gravissima’ (from Minerva Britanna [London, 1612]). It is tempting to read ‘cock’ vulgarly to mean penis. The OED confirms this usage was contemporary (n.1 20, examples from 1611, 1618), though the later allegorical reference to ‘Incest’ (1. 10) suggests Peacham could be referring to the cock bird as a gift commonly given to boys viewed with pederastic intent in ancient Greece (see Saslow, p. 4, p. 149), whilst simultaneously continuing Ganymede’s mythological association with birds.
John Rainoldes, Th’ Overthrow of Stage-Playes (London, 1599), p. 11.
See Nora Johnson, ‘Ganymedes and Kings: Staging Male Homosexual Desire in The Winter’s Tale’, Shakespeare Studies, 26 (1998), 187–217; and Macdonald when discussing a children’s company’s intention to produce Dido, ‘young actors […] were commonly known as “ganymedes” ‘, p. 103. Also see Stephen Orgel, Impersonations, ‘Public theatre is regularly associated […] not only with loose women but with homosexual prostitution’, p. 37.
Austin Saker, Narbonus (London, 1580)
Barnabe Rich, ‘Of Phylotus and Emelia’, in Rich his Farewell to Milatarie profession (London, 1581).
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© 2011 Sarah Carter
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Carter, S. (2011). ‘That female wanton boy’: Ganymede, Iphis, and Myths of Same Sex Desire. In: Ovidian Myth and Sexual Deviance in Early Modern English Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230306073_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230306073_4
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