Homosexuality & Civilization by Louis Crompton

From the Publisher

How have major civilizations of the last two millennia treated people who were attracted to their own sex? In a narrative tour de force, Louis Crompton chronicles the lives and achievements of homosexual men and women alongside a darker history of persecution, as he compares the Christian West with the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, Arab Spain, imperial China, and pre-Meiji Japan.

Ancient Greek culture celebrated same-sex love in history, literature, and art, making high claims for its moral influence. By contrast, Jewish religious leaders in the sixth century B.C.E. branded male homosexuality as a capital offense and, later, blamed it for the destruction of the biblical city of Sodom. When these two traditions collided in Christian Rome during the late empire, the tragic repercussions were felt throughout Europe and the New World.

Louis Crompton traces Church-inspired mutilation, torture, and burning of "sodomites" in sixth-century Byzantium, medieval France, Renaissance Italy, and in Spain under the Inquisition. But Protestant authorities were equally committed to the execution of homosexuals in the Netherlands, Calvin's Geneva, and Georgian England. The root cause was religious superstition, abetted by political ambition and sheer greed. Yet from this cauldron of fears and desires, homoerotic themes surfaced in the art of the Renaissance masters—Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Sodoma, Cellini, and Caravaggio—often intertwined with Christian motifs. Homosexuality also flourished in the court intrigues of Henry III of France, Queen Christina of Sweden, James I and William III of England, Queen Anne, and Frederick the Great.

Anti-homosexual atrocities committed in the West contrast starkly with the more tolerant traditions of pre-modern China and Japan, as revealed in poetry, fiction, and art and in the lives of emperors, shoguns, Buddhist priests, scholars, and actors. In the samurai tradition of Japan, Crompton makes clear, the celebration of same-sex love rivaled that of ancient Greece.

Sweeping in scope, elegantly crafted, and lavishly illustrated, Homosexuality and Civilization is a stunning exploration of a rich and terrible past.

Publishers Weekly

In this notable monograph, impressive for its breadth and readability, an early pioneer of gay and lesbian studies attempts the Herculean task of chronicling the history of homosexuality in Europe and parts of Asia from Homer to the 18th century. In a series of short vignettes, Crompton, emeritus professor of English at the University of Nebraska, relates the "rich and terrible" stories of men and women who have been immortalized, celebrated, shunned or executed for the special attention they paid to members of their own sex. Two chapters on China and Japan are a welcome addition to the usual Eurocentric focus. Crompton's comparative study reveals just how anomalous Judeo-Christian aversion to homosexuality seems in the context of world history. On the battlefield with Alexander the Great, in the highest ranks of the Han dynasty in China, in the "bisexual" poetry of Arab Spain and among the samurai in Japan, same-sex male love flourished (lesbianism, Crompton admits, is harder to find). Even among Christian rulers of European countries, homosexual attachments weren't unheard of. Crompton surmises that in 1610, "one `sodomite,' James I, ruled England, Scotland, and Ireland; another, Rudolph II, presided over the Holy Roman Empire; and France had its second homosexual king within a generation." Crompton's vivid and sobering accounts of the persecution of homosexuals under Christian regimes throughout the centuries emerge as the book's undeniable focus. Throughout, Crompton's great intellectual nemesis is the late Michel Foucault, whose History of Sexuality, Volume I emphasizes the difficulty of reconstructing the sexual ethos of another culture or historical period and who has inspired a generation of historians, literary scholars and cultural critics to grapple with sexuality in their work. By contrast, Crompton interprets his evidence quotes liberally from primary sources. Read as an anthology of those sources, Crompton's work will be valuable to scholars of all stripes. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Recent landmark decisions in the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts on same-sex relationships have engendered passionate public debate about homosexuality in society and revealed the depth of homophobia in 21st-century North America. In this ambitious work, Crompton (English, emeritus, Univ. of Nebraska; Byron and Greek Love) strikes at the roots of these attitudes by examining homosexuals throughout 24 centuries of history. Drawing chiefly on primary sources, the author presents a comprehensive, richly detailed study of Western civilization from ancient Greece, where same-sex relationships were celebrated, through the rise of the three "Abrahamic" religions (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) and the resulting vilification of homosexuality. He then covers the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason in Europe, with side trips to the surprisingly tolerant and open cultures of China and Japan, tracing attitudes through the mid-19th century. Crompton superbly chronicles a subculture that has survived, and at times even flourished, in the face of unsparingly depicted persecution, while subtly emphasizing the vital contributions in all fields that homosexuals of both sexes have made to history. This impressive work is an essential purchase for all gay and lesbian studies and history collections.-Richard J. Violette, Special Libs. Cataloguing, Victoria, B.C. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Product Details

• ISBN: 067401197X
  
• ISBN-13: 9780674011977
• Format: Textbook Hardcover, 648pp
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Pub. Date: October 2003
• Edition Number: 1
• Sales Rank: 211,997

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents