Before the Closet: Same-Sex Love from "Beowulf" to "Angels in America"

Book info: Before the Closet: Same-Sex Love from "Beowulf" to "Angels in America" (Hardcover, 380 pages) – University of Chicago Press, 1998. Language: English.

Allen J. Frantzen challenges the long accepted view that the early Middle Ages tolerated and even fostered same-sex relations and that intolerance of homosexuality developed only late in the medieval period. Frantzen shows that in early medieval Europe, the Church did not tolerate same-sex acts, in fact it was an age before people recognized the existence—or the possibility—of the "closet."With its ambitious scope and elegant style, Before the Closet sets same-sex relations in Anglo-Saxon sources in relation to the sexual themes of contemporary opera, dance, and theatre. Frantzen offers a comprehensive analysis of sources from the seventh to the twelfth century and traces Anglo-Saxon same-sex behavior through the age of Chaucer and into the Renaissance."Frantzen's marvelous book . . . opens up a world most readers will never have even known was there. It's a difficult topic, but Frantzen's comprehensive, readable and even wryly funny treatment makes this an unexpected pleasure."—Publishers Weekly, starred review About the Author Allen J. Frantzen is a professor of English at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of Before the Closet: Same-Sex Love from "Beowulf" to "Angels in America."