The History of Homosexuality, Part 1

The first of four lectures delivered earlier this year by Sir Noel Malcolm, political journalist, historian, and research fellow at Oxford University.   These lectures are based on his new book, which I've not read yet:  Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-Male Sexual Relations, 1400-1750, but it's now on my to-get list.

The subject has always been fascinating to your Head Trucker, for obvious reasons, and I have read quite a bit about it.  Sir Noel looks just as you might expect an Oxbridge professor to look:  old-fashioned haircut, wire-rimmed glasses, and slightly rumpled suit; but he's not stuffy at all, and he really knows his stuff, so what he has to say is well worth your time.  

This lecture gives an overview of same-sex relations in the Mediterranean countries in the early modern period (the era formerly known as the Renaissance).  Sir Noel is soft-spoken, so I turned up the volume, slowed the playback speed to 85%, and turned on the captions - which, however, are often ludicrous when he is quoting a foreign phrase.  I'll be posting the rest of the series once a week. 

Bonus:  Your Head Trucker recommends these books for further reading in gay history.

• Allen Bernstein, Millions of Homos (Our Queer America), 1940 (unpublished manuscript available in PDF format).

• Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, 2003.  (A 640-page masterpiece, surveying homosexuality in major cultures from East to West, and from antiquity to the 18th century.)

• Kenneth Dover, Greek Homosexuality, 1978.

• Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History, 1976.

• Rictor Norton, The Myth of the Modern Homosexual, 1997.

• A. L. Rowse, Homosexuals in History, 1977.

However, your Head Trucker does not recommend anything by Michel Foucault, for reasons which will become apparent as this lecture series goes on.

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