Book Review: Homosexuality in Renaissance England

Before the 19th century the word "homosexual" did not exist. It's true: look it up. Before then, any behaviour which we might understand to be homosexual was described with words which we may now find offensive (such as "bugger" or "pederast"), antiquated (such as "uranian"), or simply peculiar (such as "pathic", "catamite" or "ganymede"). However the most important difference was that the words were used to describe behaviour and practices, and not an idenity, because before the 19th century, the homosexual identity did not exist.

There are several books which chart the history of homosexuality in Europe. Bray's research - highly praised when published in 1982 and still largely influential when reading English Rennaisance texts from a Queer perspective - covers three centuries of the legal and social documentary in England of what would eventually become the gay sense of self.

It is refreshingly short, too, making what is essentially an academic text all the more accessible to the casual yet keen reader. The first chapter deals with coming to an understanding of what we would now call homosexuality wwithin the social and cultural context of the sixteenth century, before moving on in the second chapter to give examples of legal records: both enlightening for their presence and frustrating in their ambiguity and slippery terminology. The third chapter looks at the phenomenon in the political context, comparing contemporary ideas of spirituality and morality with the justifications both for and against homosexual practices. It is interesting to note that though there was no distinguishable movemont for defense or pride, arguments were made in favour of segregating the sexes, and promoting what Sedgwick called "homosocial" bonding between men as a means of enforcing the patriarchal structure.

Finally, in the fourth chapter, the study jumps one hundred and fifty years on and focusses on the Molly houses, the earliest-known recognisable homosexual subculture in England. Bray also looks at the economic and political shifts caused by the preceeding Civil War and Restoration which may have contributed to changed attitudes amongst men who recognised their own sexual difference. Indeed, the Georgian period is the first, Bray argues, to delineate such differences.

Concise, simply written, and packed full of insights into everyday life, this book is an informative and enlightening must-read for gay men with an interest in our history.