Sciences of Homosexuality in Early Modern Europe

The Sciences of Homosexuality in Early Modern Europe investigates early modern scientific accounts of same-sex desire and the shapes those desires took in everyday life. It asks many of the questions still current today about the nature of homosexual attraction and love by translating them into the historical frameworks of the Medieval and Renaissance worlds. It demonstrates that by 1700 most of the scientific ideas about the so-called 'unnatural practices' of same-sex physical attachments had already been foregrounded by scientists and philosophers. The contributors, all international authorities, challenge the view that the scientific basis of same-sex attraction is a modern invention. They illustrate how many of the ideas about homosexual attraction antedated the European Enlightenment by appealing to anatomy, astrology, medicine and physiognomy in their formative development between the Middle Ages and European Enlightenment. Later on, post-industrial society tightened its stranglehold on the 'love that dared not speak its name' by implementing laws and building prisons to confine offenders but in itself it did not construct the arguments or generate the main philosophical positions. These were forged, as this fascinating new book demonstrates, in the early-modern world before 1700.Borris, Kenneth is the author of 'Sciences of Homosexuality in Early Modern Europe', published 2008 under ISBN 9780415403214 and ISBN 0415403219.