Homoeroticism
The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with Western culture and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (December 2023) |
Homoeroticism is sexual attraction between members of the same sex, including both male–male and female–female attraction.[2] The concept differs from the concept of homosexuality: it refers specifically to the desire itself, which can be temporary, whereas "homosexuality" implies a more permanent state of identity or sexual orientation. It has been depicted or manifested throughout the history of the visual arts and literature and can also be found in performative forms; from theatre to the theatricality of uniformed movements (e.g., the Wandervogel and Gemeinschaft der Eigenen). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is "pertaining to or characterized by a tendency for erotic emotions to be centered on a person of the same sex; or pertaining to a homo-erotic person."[3]
This is a relatively recent
Though homoeroticism can differ from the interpersonal homoerotic—as a set of artistic and performative traditions, in which such feelings can be embodied in culture and thus expressed into the wider society[4]—some authors have cited the influence of personal experiences in ancient authors such as Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius in their homoerotic poetry.[5]
Overview and analysis
The term "homoerotic" carries with it the weight of modern classifications of love and desire that may not have existed in previous eras. Homosexuality as known today was not fully codified until the mid-20th century, though this process began much earlier:
Following in the tradition of
David Halperin have argued that various Victorian public discourses, notably the psychiatric and the legal, fostered a designation or invention of the "homosexual" as a distinct category of individuals, a category solidified by the publications of sexologists such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) and Havelock Ellis (1859–1939), sexologists who provided an almost-pathological interpretation of the phenomenon in rather Essentialist terms, an interpretation that led, before 1910, to hundreds of articles on the subject in The Netherlands, Germany, and elsewhere. One result of this burgeoning discourse was that the "homosexual" was often portrayed as a corrupter of the innocent, with a predisposition towards both depravity and paederasty—a necessary portrayal if Late-Victorian and Edwardian sexologists were to account for the continuing existence of the "paederast" in a world that had suddenly become bountiful in "homosexuals."[6]
Despite an ever-changing and evolving set of modern classifications, members of the same sex often formed intimate associations (many of which were erotic as well as emotional) on their own terms, most notably in the "romantic friendships" documented in the letters and papers of 18th- and 19th-century men and women.[7] These romantic friendships, which may or may not have included genital sex, were characterized by passionate emotional attachments and what modern thinkers would consider homoerotic overtones.
Psychoanalysis
Notable examples in the visual arts
Male–male
Male–male examples, in the visual fine arts, range through history:
Many 19th century
In Asia, male eroticism also has its roots in traditional Japanese shunga (erotic art), this tradition influenced contemporary Japanese artists, such as Tamotsu Yatō (photography artist), Sadao Hasegawa (painter) and Gengoroh Tagame (manga artist).
Female–female
This section possibly contains original research. (July 2023) |
Female–female examples are most historically noticeable in the narrative arts: the lyrics of
Female homoerotic art by lesbian artists has often been less culturally prominent than the presentation of lesbian eroticism by non-lesbians and for a primarily non-lesbian audience. In the West, this can be seen as long ago as the 1872 novel .
In many texts in the English-speaking world, lesbians have been presented as intensely sexual but also predatory and dangerous (the characters are often vampires)[citation needed] and the primacy of heterosexuality is usually re-asserted at the story's end. This shows the difference between homoeroticism as a product of the wider culture and homosexual art produced by gay men and women.[citation needed]
Notable examples in writing
This section possibly contains original research. (July 2023) |
The most prominent example in the Western canon is that of the sonnets by William Shakespeare. Though some critics have made assertions, some in efforts to preserve Shakespeare's literary credibility, to its being non-erotic in nature, no critic has disputed that the majority of Shakespeare's sonnets concern explicitly male–male love poetry. The only other Renaissance artist writing in English to do this was the poet Richard Barnfield, who in The Affectionate Shepherd and Cynthia wrote fairly explicitly homoerotic poetry. Barnfield's poems, furthermore, are now widely accepted as a major influence upon Shakespeare's.[13]
The male–male erotic tradition contains poems by major poets such as Abu Nuwas, Walt Whitman, Federico García Lorca, Paul Verlaine, W. H. Auden, Fernando Pessoa and Allen Ginsberg.
Elisar von Kupffer's Lieblingminne und Freundesliebe in der Weltlitteratur (1900) and Edward Carpenter's Ioläus: An Anthology of Friendship (1902) were the first known notable attempts at homoerotic anthologies since The Greek Anthology. Since then, many anthologies have been published.
In the female–female tradition, there are poets such as
Letters can also be potent conveyors of homoerotic feelings; the letters between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, two well-known members of the Bloomsbury Group, are full of homoerotic overtones characterized by this excerpt from Vita's letter to Virginia: "I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia [...] It is incredible to me how essential you have become [...] I shan't make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this --But oh my dear, I can't be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that." (January 21, 1926)
Religion
This section may present appropriate weight to the mainstream view and explaining the responses to the fringe theories.(April 2022) ) |
Although the idea is spread by some Christian circles that non-
Some speculate that John the Baptist had homosocial or homoerotic behavior. In the Gospel of John (3:22–36), John the Baptist speaks of himself as the “friend of the bridegroom,” implying that the bridegroom of Christ (Matthew 9:15) is coming to meet his bride, though nothing specific to identify the bride. Jesus was a rabbi, a teacher, and all the rabbis at that time were married; there is no reference to a possible marriage.[23]
Some theologians and scholars claim that other Biblical figures engaged in non-heterosexual behavior such as Jacob[24] and David and Jonathan,[25][26] as well as the canonized saints Francis of Assisi[27] and Saint Sebastian.[28]
In cinema
Most notable are positive portrayals of homoerotic feelings in relationships, made at feature length and for theatrical exhibition, and made by those who are same-sex oriented.[
See:
Key introductory books
Classical and medieval literature:
- Murray & Roscoe. Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature (1997)
- J. W. Wright. Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature (1997)
- Rictor Norton. The Homosexual Literary Tradition (1974) (Greek, Roman & Elizabethan England)
Literature after 1850:
- David Leavitt. Pages Passed from Hand to Hand : The Hidden Tradition of Homosexual Literature in English from 1748 to 1914 (1998)
- Timothy d'Arch Smith. Love In Earnest; some notes on the lives and writings of English 'Uranian' poets from 1889 to 1930 (1970)
- Michael Matthew Kaylor, Secreted Desires: The Major Uranians: Hopkins, Pater and Wilde (2006), a 500-page scholarly volume that considers the major Victorian writers of Uranian poetry and prose (the author has made this volume available in a free, open-access, PDF version).
- Mark Lilly. Gay Men's Literature in the Twentieth Century (1993)
- Patricia Juliana Smith. Lesbian Panic: Homoeroticism in Modern British Women's Fiction (1997)
- Gregory Woods. Articulate Flesh – male homoeroticism and modern poetry (1989) (USA poets)
- Vita Sackville-West. Louise DeSalvo, Mitchell A. Leaska, editors. Vita Sackville-West The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf (1985)
- Virginia Woolf. Congenial Spirits: The Selected Letters of Virginia Woolf Joanne Trautmann Banks, editor (Harcourt Brace, 1991)
- Joe Dowson. Past Thoughts and Precognition: Eroticism Through My Eyes (Self Published, co-author by D.Cameron, 2013)
Visual arts:
- Jonathan Weinberg. Male Desire: The Homoerotic in American Art (2005)
- James M. Saslow. Pictures and Passions: A History of Homosexuality in the Visual Arts (1999)
- Allen Ellenzweig. The Homoerotic Photograph: Male Images, Delacroix to Mapplethorpe (1992)
- Thomas Waugh. Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall (1996)
- Emmanuel Cooper. The Sexual Perspective: Homosexuality and Art in the Last 100 Years in the West (1994)
- Claude J. Summers (editor). The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts (2004)
- Harmony Hammond. Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History (2000) (Post-1968 only)
- Laura Doan. Fashioning Sapphism: The Origins of a Modern English Lesbian Culture (2001) (Post-WW Iin England)
Performing arts:
- Ramsay Burt. The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle, Sexualities (3rd Revised Edition 2022)
See also
- Bara
- Body theory
- Erotica
- Sex in advertising
- Shōnen-ai
- Slash fiction
- Uranian poetry
- Yaoi
- Yuri
References
- ^ glbtg: an encyclopaedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer culture Archived September 1, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Younger, 2005, p.80.
- ^ Quoted by Flood, 2007, p. 307.
- ^ a b Flood, 2007, p.307.
- ^ Younger, 2005, p.38.
- ^ Kaylor, Secreted Desires, p. 33
- ^ Rictor Norton, ed., My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries, Gay Sunshine Press, 1998
- ^ Über die Ehe (On Marriage), 1925. Quoted by Kontje, 2002, p. 327.
- ^ According to Flood, 2007, p.308.
- ^ Lewes 1988, p. 58
- ^ John Berger, Caravaggio, Studio International, p. 1983, Volume 196 Number 998.
- ^ Genzlinger, Neil (February 4, 2022). "James Bidgood, Master of Erotic Gay Photography, Dies at 88". The New York Times. Retrieved February 4, 2022.
- ^ Daugherty, Leo (2001). "The Question of Topical Allusion in Richard Barnfield's Pastoral Verse". In Boris, Kenneth; Klawitter, George (eds.). The Affectionate Shepherd: Celebrating Richard Barnfield. Pennsylvania: Susquehanna University Press. p. 45.
- S2CID 245037134. Retrieved 2021-12-23.
- OCLC 52509644.
- ISBN 9781444327946, retrieved 2021-12-23
- OCLC 57124976.
- S2CID 143273049.
- OCLC 57762402.
- )
- .
- OCLC 51586948.
- OCLC 51586948.
- ISBN 9780820314815, retrieved 2021-12-23
- ISBN 978-1-4443-9638-6, retrieved 2021-12-23
- )
- ISBN 978-1-349-37123-5, retrieved 2021-12-23
- ISBN 978-1-349-27123-8, retrieved 2021-12-23
Bibliography
- BURGER, Michael. The Shaping of Western Civilization: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment (University of Toronto Press, 2008), 308 pages. ISBN 978-1-55111-432-3
- YOUNGER, John Grimes. Sex in the ancient world from A to Z (Routledge, 2005), 217 pages. ISBN 978-0-415-24252-3
- FLOOD, Michael. International encyclopedia of men and masculinities (Routledge, 2007), 704 pages. ISBN 978-0-415-33343-6
- HEILBUT, Anthony. ISBN 978-0-520-20911-4
- KONTJE, Todd Curtis. A companion to German realism, 1848–1900 (Camden House, 2002), 412 pages. ISBN 978-1-57113-322-9
- Lewes, Kenneth (1988), The Psychoanalytic Theory of Male Homosexuality, New York: New American Library, ISBN 0-452-01003-9
Further reading
- FALCON, Felix Lance. Gay Art: a Historic Collection [and history], ed. and with an introd. & captions by Thomas Waugh (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2006), 255 p. ISBN 1-55152-205-5