The Pursuit Of Sodomy

Male Homosexuality in Renaissance And,Enlightenment Europe,.

The Reformation was the seismic event in European history over the past 1000 years, and one which tore the medieval world apart. Not just European religion, but thought, culture, society, state systems, personal relations - everything - was turned upside down. Just about everything which followed in European history can be traced back in some way to the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation which it provoked. The Reformation is where the modern world painfully and dramatically began, and MacCulloch's great history of it is recognised as the best modern account.

With careful reasoning supported by wide-ranging scholarship, this study exposes the fallacies of 'social constructionist' theories within lesbian and gay studies and makes a forceful case for the autonomy of queer identity and culture. It presents evidence that queers are part of a centuries-old history, possessing a unified historical and cultural identity. The volume reviews the fundamental historiographical issues about the nature of queer history, arguing that a new generation of queer historians will need to abandon authoritarian dogma founded upon politically-correct ideology rather than historical experience. Norton offers a clear exposition of the evidence for ancient, indigenous and pre-modern queer cultural continuity, revealing how knowledge of that history has been suppressed and censored and sets out the 'queer cultural essentialist' position on the key topics of queer history – role, identity, bisexuality, orientation, linguistics, social control, homophobia, subcultures, and kinship patterns.

This anthology comprises 52 articles based on presentations at colloquia sponsored by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) during its first decade (1986-96) at the CUNY Graduate School. Arrangement is in five sections covering identities as they revolve around gender and sexuality; the terrains of homosexual history; mind- body relations; laws and economics; and policy issues related to gay youth, AIDS, and aging. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Queer Representations celebrates the eclectic, diverse nature of gay and lesbian culture and its production. The volume begins by asking how we can interpret an image--is the image homosexual and if so, how can we understand it? Closely connected to its interpretation is how we visualize homosexuality, or, in Allen Ellenzweig's term, how we picture the homoerotic, the organizing principle of a section devoted to American cinema and performance in general. The crucial role of biography and autobiography is the central preoccupation of the next section, with essays on Radclyffe Hall, Langston Hughes, and Louisa May Alcott. Featuring many of the most respected figures in queer studies and contemporary queer literature, among them Dorothy Allison, Edmund White, Barbara Smith, Essex Hemphill, Michael Cunningham, Allen Ginsberg, Samuel R. Delany, Dale Peck, Jewelle Gomez, Joan Nestle, a final section explores the creation of queer literature, birthpangs, growing pains, and achievements. By emphasizing the interconnectedness of gay and lesbian lives and the literature which has been instrumental in defining, reconstructing, and representing these lives, this anthology serves as a diverse introduction to queer culture and literature.

The Southern Low Countries were among Europe’s core regions for the repression of sodomy during the late medieval period. As the first comprehensive study on sodomy in the Southern Low Countries, this book charts the prosecution of sodomy in some of the region’s leading cities, such as Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp, from 1400 to 1700 and explains the reasons behind local differences and variations in the intensity of prosecution over time. Through a critical examination of a range of sources, this study also considers how the urban fabric perceived sodomy and provides a broader interpretive framework for its meaning within the local culture.

A collection of ten essays tracing the history and various uses of pornography in early modern Europe.In America today the intense and controversial debate over the censorship of pornography continues to call into question the values of a modern, democratic culture. This ground-breaking collection of ten critical essays traces the history and various uses of pornography in early modern Europe, offering the historical perspective crucial to understanding current issues of artistic censorship.The essays, by historians and literary theorists, examine how pornography emerged between 1500 and 1800 as a literary practice and a category of knowledge intimately linked to the formative moments of Western modernity and the democratization of culture. They reveal that the first modern writers and engravers of pornography were part of the demimonde of heretics, freethinkers, and libertines who constituted the dark underside of the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. From the beginning, early modern European pornography used the shock of sex to test the boundaries and regulation of decent and obscene behavior and expression in the public and private spheres, criticizing and even subverting religious and political authorities as well social and sexual norms.ContentsIntroduction, Lynn Hunt • Humanism, Politics, and Pornography in Renaissance Italy, Paula Findlen • The Politics of Pornography: L'Ecole des filles, Joan Dejea • Sometimes a Sceptre is only a Sceptre: Pornography and Politics in Restoration England, Rachel Weil • The Materialist World of Pornography, Margaret C. Jacob • Truth and the Obscene Word in Eighteenth-Century French Pornography, Lucienne Frappier-Mazur • The Pornographic Whore: Prostitution in French Pornography from Margot to Juliette, Kathryn Norberg • Erotic Fantasy and the Libertine Dispensation in Eighteenth-Century England, Randolph Trumbach • Politics and Pornography in the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic,Wijnand W. Mijnhardt • Pornography and the French Revolution, Lynn Hunt

In this groundbreaking collection of essays, historians and literary theorists examine how, between 1500 and 1800, pornography emerged as a literary practice and a category of knowledge intimately linked to the formative moments of Western modernity and the democratization of culture. The first modern writers and engravers of pornography were part of the demimonde of heretics, freethinkers, and libertines who constituted the dark underside of the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. From the start, early modern European pornography used the shock of sex to test the boundaries and regulation of obscene behavior and expression in the public and private sphere. As such, pornography criticized and even subverted political authorities as well as social and sexual relations.