The study of homosexual, lesbian and bisexual relations during the Middle Ages is a new area of research, with some of the first important books on the topics being published in the late 1970s/early 1980s.
ADDRESSING THE ISSUE OF LESBIANISM IN A GENERAL COURSE ON WOMEN IN THE MIDDLE AGES
July 2, 2011 By
ADDRESSING THE ISSUE OF LESBIANISM IN A GENERAL COURSE ON WOMEN IN THE MIDDLE AGES Huot, Sylvia Medieval Feminist Newsletter, Volume 13, Issue 1 (1992) Spring 1992 Abstract I taught “Women in the Middle Ages” as an advanced seminar, available for credit towards an undergraduate minor or a graduate concentration in Women’s Studies. The course […]
The Experience of Homosexuality in the Middle Ages
July 2, 2011 By
Homosexual sex was widespread in the Middle Ages and there is abundant information on what church writers and secular legislators thought about it. Shoddy or partisan scholarship and a distinctly modern disdain of homosexuals by scholars until recently marked much of the discussion of the history of this medieval homosexuality.
Homoerotic Liasons among the Mamluk Elite in Late Medieval Egypt and Syria
July 2, 2011 By
Homoerotic Liasons among the Mamluk Elite in Late Medieval Egypt and Syria By Everett K. Rowson Islamicate sexualities: translations across temporal geographies of desire, edited by Kathryn Babayan and Afsaneh Najmabadi (Harvard University Press, 2008) Extract: The French Dominican William of Adam, writing about 1318, explains “In the Saracen sect any sexual act at all […]
GAY STUDIES AND FEMINISM: A MEDIEVALIST’S PERSPECTIVE
July 1, 2011 By
GAY STUDIES AND FEMINISM: A MEDlEVALIST’S PERSPECTIVE Gaunt, Simon Medieval Feminist Newsletter, Volume 13, Issue 1 (1992) Spring 1992 Abstract Simon Gaunt and Carolyn Dinshaw, reflecting on the nature of compulsory heterosexuality in the Middle Ages, suggest that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s concept of a spectrum of possible sexualities can be very helpful. Sedgwick asserts that […]
Brotherhood of Vice: Sodomy, Islam, and the Knights Templar
July 1, 2011 By
The charge of sodomy was unique because it was a crime of personal moral failure, rather than an organizational heresy which could threaten state authority.
Female Sodomy: The Trial of Katherina Hetzeldorfer (1477)
July 1, 2011 By
Female Sodomy: The Trial of Katherina Hetzeldorfer (1477) By Helmet Puff Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1 (2000) Introduction: In this essay, I will disclose rhetorical strategies used to negotiate “female sodomy” in a legal document from the pre-Reformation German Empire. By sodomy, “that utterly confused category” (to invoke Foucault’s […]
The myth of lesbian impunity: capital laws from 1270 to 1791
July 1, 2011 By
The myth of lesbian impunity: capital laws from 1270 to 1791 By Louis Crompton Journal of Homosexuality, Vol.6 No.1-2 (1980-81) Abstract: The standard history of antihomosexual legislation states that lesbian acts were not punished by medieval or later laws. This essay challenges this view by documenting capital laws since 1270 in Europe and America. A […]
On Lesbian and Gay/Queer Medieval Studies
July 1, 2011 By
On Lesbian and Gay/Queer Medieval Studies By David Lorenzo Boyd Medieval Feminist Forum, Vol.15 No. 1 (1993) Introduction: A graduate student sitting next to me at an MLA panel on “Lesbian and Gay/Feminist Approaches to Middle English Texts” turned to me happily and said: ”Thank God, at last it’s the year of the queer for […]
Between Monks: Tales of Monastic Companionship in Early Byzantium
July 1, 2011 By
Between Monks: Tales of Monastic Companionship in Early Byzantium By Derek Krueger Journal of the History of Sexuality, Volume 20, Number 1 (2011) Introduction: The Latin version of John Moschos’s Spiritual Meadow preserves a story narrated to John and his companion Sophronios by Abba Stephen the Cappadocian while they visited Mount Sinai. Stephen was in […]
The transformation of homosexual Liebestod in sagas translated from Latin
May 8, 2011 By
The transformation of homosexual Liebestod in sagas translated from Latin Ashurst, David Saga-Book (2002) Abstract The focus of this article will be on a series of texts in which one warrior dies clasping the body of a fallen comrade; but before concentrating on that theme I must explain the term liebestod, ëlove- deathí, and its […]
Homosexuality in the Middle Ages
May 8, 2011 By
Homosexuality in the Middle Ages Johansson, Warren & Percy, William A. Homosexuality in the Middle Ages (2009) Abstract Homosexuality in the Middle Ages long remained virtually unexplored. All that the pioneer investigators of the preHitler period, Xavier Mayne [pseudonym of Edward Irenaeus Prime Stevenson], The Intersexes (1907), Magnus Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des […]
The Cuckold, His Wife, and Her Lover: A Study of Infidelity in the Cent nouvelles nouvelles, the Decameron, and the Libro de buen amor
May 7, 2011 By
This dissertation compares representations of women in erotic triangles. I contend that despite the stability implied by the triangular shape, the erotic triangle can be made unstable through women’s language.
Medieval Arab Lesbians and Lesbian-Like Women
April 9, 2011 By
Foreshadowing the medicalization of homosexuality in nineteenth-century Europe, lesbianism in the medieval Islamicate medical tradition seems to have already been regarded as a medical category (though not a deviant one) requiring specific treatment, namely rubbing.
Representing the Negative: Positing the Lesbian Void in Medieval English Anchoritism
March 29, 2011 By
Moreover, the anchoritic cell provided something that the majority of medieval households did not have – a private space. This space was specifically female, specifically female-controlled, and specifically eroticized.
“Salvation, Sex, and Subjectivity”
March 4, 2011 By
Vagantes Conference Bruce Vernarde (Pitt U) “Salvation, Sex, and Subjectivity” In 1980, John Boswell published “Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality”. It was considered a groundbreaking work in the history of homosexuality. It argued that male/male eroticism was not condemned, but was even celebrated, until the later Middle Ages (around the 13th century). Boswell’s view had […]
Sex Difference in Medieval Theology and Canon Law: A Tribute to Joan Cadden
February 20, 2011 By
Meanings of Sex Difference draws on a very wide range of sources, cross- ing and re-crossing traditional boundaries between the disciplines. Joan Cadden also pays particular attention to the cultural and social milieux these sources were produced in; to the assumptions and expectations of authors and readers; to questions of form, style, and presentation.
“Lesbian-Like” and the Social History of Lesbianisms
February 14, 2011 By
“Lesbian-Like” and the Social History of Lesbianisms Bennett, Judith M.(University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 9, nos. 1-2 (2000) Abstract In Queer Studies, social history is “queer.” Gay and lesbian histories abound with insightful analyses of texts produced by the powerful and privileged, but they are relatively […]
Study examines the same-sex relationships of Medieval Arab Women
July 29, 2010 By
A recent article suggests that lesbian activities of women in the medieval Arab world were far more common and open than is commonly believed, or would be considered acceptable in today’s Middle East.
Why Minorities Were Neither Tolerated nor Discriminated Against in the Middle Ages
January 20, 2010 By
Discrimination and tolerance are asymmetrical concepts in present day usage. Tolerance has a positive meaning and denotes the attitude of a majority that accepts deviant forms of reasoning or behaviour practiced by a minority.
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