Cruising the Mediterranean: Narratives of Sexuality and Geographies of the Eastern Mediterranean in Early Modern English Prose Romances

Abstract

L ike Antony in Antony and Cleopatra , many traveling knights, wandering noble youths, and entrepreneurial merchant-travelers in the early modern English prose romances have found pleasures in the eastern Mediterranean. And like the young Italian scholar-narrator in Pamuk’s novel set in sixteenth-century Constantinople, many early modern English readers turned to romances for tales of chivalry and courtship. Self-exiled, banished, orphaned, shipwrecked, and cast off on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean, the heroes of romances get caught up in heroic and romantic adventures that subject their masculinity to compromising tests. Romances of Mediterranean crossings raise several crucial questions: Why do English heroes embark on arduous voyages in the Mediterranean in order to battle and trade, but end up being distracted by romantic plots there? How does exploring plots based on desire about heroic Englishmen in the context of eastern Mediterranean travel and geography alter our notions of masculinity, sexuality, and non-Christian “otherness”? Why are certain sexual practices and actions imagined as suitable to specific locations in the eastern Mediterranean? These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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