ABSTRACT
This chapter explains that in The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England, Valerie Traub traces discursive shifts in representing relations between women, from an assumption that such relations are innocent and insignificant, to a rhetoric of suspicion which brings together the figures of the chaste female friend and the tribade. Traub italicizes lesbian' and lesbianism' to defamiliarize these terms and to mark their epistemological inadequacy, psychological coarseness, and historical contingency' to Early Modern literature, history and culture. Assertions of innocence in Philips's poetry generally have been read by critics as an elevation of lesbian love into the spiritually lofty realm of Platonic friendship; proof positive that she did not carnally desire her friends; a phobic disavowal of the fact that she did desire her friends; or a strategic cover for a lesbian not yet ready to come out of the closet.
