Handbook of Medieval Sexuality by Brundage James Bullough Vern L

Author:Brundage, James, Bullough, Vern L.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: LABOR CODE
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

NOTES

1. I am indebted to Robert Clark for generously allowing his hitherto unpublished translation of pertinent stanzas of Etienne de Fougeres's Livre des manieres to appear here. I also would like to thank E. Ann Matter and Barry D. Adam, who kindly read and commented on earlier drafts of this chapter.

2. There are virtually no examples of historians of sexuality who embrace a purely essentialist understanding of human sexuality.

3. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978) discusses the historical construction of sexuality at length.

4. David M. Halperin, “Sex Before Sexuality: Pederasty, Politics, and Power in Classical Athens,” in Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, eds. Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, Jr. (New York: Meridian Book, 1989), 36–53.

5. John Boswell, “Revolutions, Universals, and Sexual Categories,” Salmagundi 58–59 (Fall 1982-Winter 1983): 89–113; rpt. in Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, eds. Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, Jr. (New York: Meridian Book, 1989), 17–36.

6. Boswell, “Revolutions, Universals, and Sexual Categories,” in Hidden Front History, 19.

7. Ibid., 20.

8. John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

9. Boswell, “Revolutions, Universals, and Sexual Categories,” in Hidden From History, 35.

10. See, for example, the few references to lesbians in Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality; Vern L. Bullough, Homosexuality: A History (New York: Garland Publishing, 1979), Sexual Variance in Society and History (New York: John Wiley, 1976), and “The Sin against Nature and Homosexuality,” in Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church, ed. Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1982), 55–71 ; and Derrick Sherwin Bailey, Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition (London: Longmans, Green, 1955; rpt. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1975). Many studies are even more cursory in their outright dismissal of lesbians or pessimism about the existence of sources to even study medieval lesbians. More recently, John Boswell has presented an apologia in response to mounting criticism about the marginalization of women in studies on medieval homosexuality. Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (New York: Villard Books, 1994), xxvii–xxx.

11. Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Signs 5:4 (1980): 631–60; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Introduction: Axiomatic,” in Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 1–63; Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990). A session entitled “‘Pastism,’ ‘Presentism,’ Theory: Roundtable on Judith Butler's Gender Trouble” explored the application of her theoretical perspective to medieval studies at the 27th International Medieval Congress, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, May 1992.

12. Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality,” 648–49 . The emphasis is in the original.

13. Sedgwick, “Introduction: Axiomatic,” 44, 52–53.

14. Ann Ferguson, Jacquelyn N. Zita, and Kathryn Pyne Addelson, “On ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence’: Defining the Issues,” Signs 7 (1981): 158–99. See, in particular, Ferguson's comments, 160 and her Sexual Democracy: Women, Oppression, and Revolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), especially 52–65.

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