Jemma Forster, Trinity Hall

Degree: PhD
Course: English
Supervisor: Dr Tania Demetriou
Dissertation Title:

'Dianic Networks of Female Homoeroticism in Early Modern European Texts'


Biographical Information

I completed my English BA at The University of Cambridge in 2022, and my MA in Early Modern English Literature at King’s College London in 2023. I am co-funded by the AHRC (OOC DTP) and Trinity Hall. 

Research Interests

My thesis examines the function of Diana as a signifier of female homoeroticism in Elizabethan and Jacobean texts, interrogating the critical understanding of Diana’s primary association with Elizabeth I and the cult of chastity in early modern English literature.  Providing multiple new European sources for the representation of Diana’s train in English texts – such as Montemayor’s La Diana and Luigi Groto’s La Calisto – I call attention to the nuances of literary transmission and reception, demonstrating that the literary interest in Diana as a signifier of female homoeroticism does not derive solely from the vogue Ovidianism of the Elizabethan period, and is instead often in response to earlier European texts that integrate Diana into a framework of pastoral homoeroticism. Whilst the central concern of this thesis is the pervasiveness of Diana’s association with female homoerotic behaviours in texts of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period (Philip Sidney, John Lyly, Shakespeare, Thomas Heywood), my historicist approach also sheds light on the transmission of European texts into England and on the complex, mediated relationship between early modern readers and classical texts. 

My wider research interests include: classical reception and Ovidianism; translation/revision/adaptation ; queer theory; printed playbooks; Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. I welcome supervision inquiries related to any of these areas of interest. 

Selected Publications

Conference Papers

  • ‘“our general of ebbs and flows”: Diana and the Temporality of Female Homoeroticism in The Two Noble Kinsmen’. European Shakespeare Research Association Conference (ESRA), The University of Porto, 10th July 2025
  • ‘Dianic Networks of Female Homoeroticism in Jorge de Montemayor’s La Diana (1559)’, Oxford Spanish Golden Age Symposium, Merton College, University of Oxford, 4th December 2025 [upcoming]
  • ‘“who are the best Spanish poets? They are Boscan, Grenade, Garcilasso and Mont-Maior”: Jorge de Montemayor's La Diana (1559) and Shakespearean Female Homoeroticism’. Shakespeare Association of America Annual Meeting, Colorado Convention centre, 1st April 2026 [upcoming]