Mary-Michelle DeCoste - Böcker

Book three of the Italian poet Matteo Maria Boiardo's epic poem Orlando innamorato (Orlando in Love) was published posthumously in 1494; in 1532, the poet Ludovico Ariosto published his final version of a sequel, Orlando furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando). At the end of his poem, Boiardo tells the tale of the princess Fiordispina's unfulfilled desire for the maiden warrior Bradamante, a story that Ariosto retells in the body of his later work.In Hopeless Love, Mary-Michelle DeCoste examines both versions of the Fiordispina and Bradamante episode using feminist and queer theory. DeCoste then links these treatments of queer female desire to their wider cultural contexts by exploring their antecedents in genres such as medieval romance epic and hagiography and by examining similar tropes in other sixteenth-century romance epics. An important work on a previously overlooked subject, Hopeless Love uncovers the diffusion of queer female desire in Italian literature and promotes a better understanding of sexuality in medieval and Renaissance Europe.

What is Europe? Who is European? What do Europe and European identity mean in the twenty-first century? This collection of sixteen essays seeks to answer these questions by focusing on Europe as it is seen through its own eyes and through the eyes of others across a variety of cultural texts, including sport, film, literature, dance, cartography, and fashion. These texts, as interpreted here by emerging researchers as well as well-established scholars, enable us to engage with European identities in the plural and to understand what these identities mean in larger cultural and political contexts. The interdisciplinary focus of this volume permits an exploration of European identity that reaches beyond the area of European studies to incorporate understandings of identity from the viewpoints of both insider and other. Contributors explore diverse understandings of what it means to be ""other"" to a country, a culture, a society, or a subgroup. This book offers a fresh perspective on the evolving concept of identity - in the context of Europe past, present, and future - and expands on the existing literature by considering the political tensions and social implications of the development of European identity, as well as its literary, artistic, and cultural manifestations.