Queer Renaissance Historiography examines the distinctive arrangement of sexuality during the Renaissance period and the role that queer theory has played in our understanding. This book sets the tone for future scholarship on Renaissance sexualities, making a timely intervention in theoretical and methodological debates. 'We know from the stories of Orpheus and of Lot that the backward gaze brings in its wake all kinds of queer, unsettling effects. The same can be said for Queer Renaissance Historiography. The sparks fly in these productively contentious essays which illuminatingly rethink queer scholarship's relation to historicism. There is no end of surprises, provocations, and pleasures here.' Richard Rambuss, Emory University, USA '...the essays help reveal the effects queer-identified readings have upon Renaissance texts and vice versa, effects achieved outside overly-narrow concepts of historical difference.' Renaissance Quarterly 'The questions raised by the book are fascinating and important for both sexual history and unhistory.' English Studies in Canada '... provide[s] a window into the early modern structure of sexual relations and thinking about sexuality/eroticism that, until fairly recently, scholars, critics, and historians have read as being as clearly delimited as modern sexual identities.' Journal of British Studies