Author of the first English translation of Lucian's 'Courtesans', Thomas Brown was a prolific professional writer and a first-class linguist and classicist. Virgil Eclogues, Georgics, and the Aeneid are all founding texts in the Western literary tradition. George Turbervile's translation of Ovid's 'Sappho to Phaon' was the first and last in the sixteenth-century period to be so explicit about the primary and erotic nature of Sappho's same-sex relationships. Often called 'the Roman Homer', Virgil was one of the first pagan poets to be reinterpreted for Christian audiences and sensibilities. George Chapman's complete translation of the Iliad was published in 1611, and was followed three years later by a translation of the Odyssey. Sir Philip Sidney's works include the sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella; his influential defence of imaginative writing Apology for Poetry; translations of Psalms; and his never-out-of-print prose romance Arcadia.

This chapter begins to take a broader look at the way the symptoms of masturbation can be seen to map over those of other conditions. The chapter commences with a detailed consideration of Victorian medical writing on female masturbation. Although twentieth-century authors and sexologists such as Betty Dodson and Nancy Friday promote masturbation as a positive sexual activity for women, the message was very different a century before. Works aimed at women can also be seen to play on the fears of the heterosexual female who desires marriage and children. Masturbation in women was not only frequently associated with nymphomania and prostitution but was also said to impair or destroy a woman's childbearing capabilities. A close reading of popular medical texts for female readers further discloses an equation between the practice of masturbation and the loss of virginity.

This chapter focuses on the concept of the seven deadly sins, considering it as a track for the motivating vices in Shakespeare's tragedies after Hamlet. It studies Spenser's account of the seven deadly sins in the Faerie Queene as a natural source for Shakespeare, along with the evidence that Shakespeare was very familiar with the 1590 edition of The Faerie Queene. The chapter determines that Shakespeare's basic medieval affinities should not be doubted; it is the moral-allegorical nature of his plays which should be questioned.

The condemnation of male and female same-sex sexual acts is embedded in the earliest Christian theology regarding sexuality, heterosexual marriage, and reproduction: human genitalia were created for reproduction, mirroring the creative act of God. Same-sex intercourse, especially in its particular characterization as sodomy, was in a different category of sin from forbidden heterosexual acts. In terms of Scriptural prohibitions, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah was by far the most frequently discussed biblical condemnation of same-sex intercourse, and male same-sex anal congress was the most frequently alluded to same-sex act. Forbidden heterosexual acts within and outside of marriage were less serious: they were violations of God's will, but not also violations of nature. Attempting to undermine the spiritual and political authority of the Roman Catholic Church, English Protestant reformists often seized on sodomy as a highly charged and emotive anti-papal discourse, with female homoerotic sexual acts sometimes appearing as well.

This chapter discusses The Great World, Malouf's novel that has a multiple-worlds orientation and is a novel of transactions. It addresses the questions posed by this novel, which are how one would live in the new world of post-war Australia and what kind of history the novel tries to give. This chapter also reveals the various Australian experiences of war that are presented in this novel.

This chapter centres on Ghosh's exploration of science, knowledge and rationality. It examines Ghosh's The Calcutta Chromosome, In an Antique Land and The Circle of Reason. It shows that in these three works, Ghosh assumed a deconstructive enterprise that aimed to reveal the gaps and fissures of modernity's metaphysic. This chapter also introduces the concept of the metaphysic of modernity (with respect to social science and science), which can be found in the three works.

Canon law had long condemned male same-sex sexual acts, at least from the late fourth century, but the later Church courts were inconsistent in their treatment of offenders. In England, same-sex sexual acts between men (called 'sodomy' and 'buggery' in English legal discourses) began to be regulated and punished by the state only with the 1533-34 statute against buggery. As the Castlehaven trial suggests, legal prosecution and execution for sodomy could occur without proving anal penetration and emission. There are two indictments against Mervin Lord Audley, the first for rape, the second for sodomy; the prisoner is honourable, the crimes dishonourable of which he is indicted. Humphrey Stafford focuses on defining Stafford as a good gentleman who sinned, making him much less a monstrous stereotype of vice than is the case either with John Atherton or with Renaissance crime pamphlets convicted murderers.

This chapter discusses several of Marlouf's short stories, such as ‘A Medium’ and ‘Southern Skies’. It shows that Marlouf tends to move frequently from one unstable, unmastered version of self into another, and that some of his short stories confront the theme of coming of age. This chapter examines some notable characters in these short stories, which address such issues as violence and beauty.

This chapter provides an introduction to narrative theory as a formal approach to the lives of the saints in the Scottish Legendary. Narratology as a key theoretical field, its main strands as well as its chances and challenges for the analysis of medieval narrative are discussed and problematised. The formal approach is placed within more general discussions of surface vs. symptomatic reading. Both a close and a deep reading are proposed as an expedient method to scrutinise the narrative art in the compilation. The chapter is rounded off with a section on the various ‘communicative’ instances that come into play when reading and interpreting the legends of the saints.

The Scottish Legendary is briefly introduced, in particular its contents, the sources the poet drew on, as well as previous critics’ treatment of the compilation. The poet’s free handling of his sources is demonstrated by two passages from the legend of Lucy. The chapter argues that it is crucial to consider saints’ lives from the perspective of their narrative structure and strategies as practices that are intimately linked with issues of translation, the vernacular, and late medieval discourses of popular, secular culture. The Scottish Legendary, it is suggested, is a prime example of transcending generic boundaries for heightening the enjoyment of the narratives.