Homoeroticism | English homework help

  
Write an argument analyzing the effects of homoeroticism in As You Like It, given the traditional function of boy actors playing female parts in Shakespeare’s comedies. How does the plot of AYLI call extra attention meta-theatrically to the homoeroticism routinely invoked by the Elizabethan transvestite public theatre? How does the homoeroticism highlighted by the plot involving Rosalind, a cross-dressing female character, both enable and disrupt forms of generic closure (e.g., celebratory heterosexual marriages; restoration of Elizabethan cultural hierarchies based upon rank, gender, social role, etc.; reinforcement of dominant, hegemonic communal values) expected in English Renaissance comedies? What difference does it make when the intense, passionate language of same-sex love, loyalty, attachment, and self-sacrifice (e.g., in some of Celia’s lines to Rosalind) arises in contexts other than those that are playing directly with the erotic instabilities and possibilities of cross-dressing as a plot device? MUST BE 7-8 PAGES