The typical focus on researching female same-sex desire in the early modern period centers around medical and legal records, the motif of physiological anomaly (the enlarged clitoris myth), and attempts to identify covert homoerotic themes in women’s writing. In contrast, pornography and popular culture (ballads and pamphlets) present a different view, even though they can rarely be interpreted as self-reporting of the women involved.
England
Covering topics relating specifically to England or generally to the region equivalent to the modern United Kingdom. Sometimes lazily and inaccurately used generally for the British Isles, especially when articles don’t specifically identify the nationality of authors.
LHMP entry
The author notes a lack of attention paid to mid-17th century literary pornography, a telling absence in considerations of gender-related shifts in this era, while also noting that feminist analysis of pornography focuses mostly on contemporary issues and treats the genre as monolithic and inherently misogynistic.
This article addresses the ticklish topic of the “sapphic incest motif” in erotic art and drama around the turn of the 20th century. Multiple themes braid together within this general context. The rhetorical use of “sisterhood” in support of feminist and sapphic communities. (It isn’t too far a stretch to assert the existence of sapphic communities at this point.) The use of actual or fictional family ties to defuse potential sapphic readings, as with actress Charlotte Cushman’s Romeo playing opposite her real-life sister’s Juliet.
This is a historiography article, reviewing a variety of general histories of sexuality and homosexuality and evaluating them. The author sets out a principle that “the most useful sexual histories are those that provide depth of context without either assuming sexual identity or anticipating its complete absence.” The focus is specifically on the 19th and 20th centuries.
This is a startlingly (I might say unexpectedly) excellent and comprehensive survey of lesbian-relevant history in Early Modern Europe. That actually makes it difficult to summarize (as well as difficult to tag, though I’ll give it my best shot). I think I’ll approach it by noting themes and topics, without necessarily trying to compose complete sentences.
I downloaded this because I had a link to it, but in the end after reading halfway through I decided not to blog it in detail. It’s interesting and competent as an undergraduate paper, examining comparative imagery in the work of Katherine Philips and near-contemporaries especially John Donne. But the paper didn’t seem to have anything genuinely new in terms of the historic record.
Andreadis opens by providing evidence that in the 17th century, people were quite capable of envisioning same-sex marriage as a concept, even if only in counter-factual situations. Popular opinion tended to divide female homoeroticism into two populations: those perceived as deviant and assigned labels like tribade, confricatrix, rubster, or tommy, and those who conformed to social expectations while expressing erotically-charged sentiments but left no trace of related sexual activity.
The articles looks at the phenomenon of crossdressing in England contrasting several angles: polemical literature condemning it, legal records punishing it, and cultural practices (such as theater) normalizing it, as well as some of the socio-economic background that made cross-dressing a flashpoint at this time.
The focus of this article is how 18th century English audiences perceived and experienced cross-dressing on stage. A large part of the article involves a detailed dissection of the 1713 play The Humours of the Army; or, The Female Officer, by Charles Shadwell. A major theme is the interplay not only between female performers taking on male roles (and its implications off stage), but characters who—within the scope of the performance—perform cross-gender roles. Another aspect of the analysis is a comparison of male versus female stage cross-dressing.
This article looks at the culture of public masquerade entertainments in 18th century England (primarily London), especially in how they promoted and supported an atmosphere of sexual liberty. This reputation of masquerades is solidly documented in social commentary and fiction of the time, such as the works of Pope, Hogarth, Fielding, and others.
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