THE GENDERING OF MEN, 1600-1750, VOL. 2: QUEER ARTICULATIONS

In his attempt to at once perform a queer reading of Boswell and to rescue Boswell from flawed queer readings, King argues that Boswell's attachments to men should be considered neither strictly homosocial nor decidedly homoerotic, but rather in light of Boswell's appropriations of "a residual language of pederastic male penetration," an already outmoded discourse characteristic of the nobility of an earlier age (343). "[...] it matters less to whom queerness belongs than how we will use queerness today," he writes in his introduction (40), indicating how he finds in early modern theatrics a collection of contrivances for modern-day queer resistance.