The Romantic Sexology of John Addington Symonds

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3647014
AutoresSam Binkley (Centre de Recherches Historiques, autor de correspondencia)
Año2000
Volumen40
Número1
Páginas79-103
Fecha de publicación2000-12-07
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Homosexuality (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0091-8369 • E-ISSN: 1540-3602
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1300/j082v40n01_04
PMID11195667
OpenAlexW2090341236
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas11

This paper examines a radical text by the English Classicist and homosexual, John Addington Symonds (1840-1893). Through a close study of an unpublished and long concealed manuscript, "A Problem in Modern Ethics" (1891), Symonds's political vision and the odd form of writing it takes is revealed as romantic in character. Symonds polemicizes against the pathologization of homosexuals in the legal-medical discourses of the time and advocates on behalf of a latent homosexual ethics, shunned from modern Western society, but continuing to hold forth a promise for the civic and moral renewal of Western countries. Against the positions of Krafft-Ebing and others, Symonds argues for the acceptance of "manly love," in the spirit of the ancients, as a source of moral inspiration for a declining Europe. Where Symonds is often read by historians of homosexual radicalism as a precursor to the radical tradition of the 20th century, romantic acceptance of the untimeliness of his moral vision, indicates less a politically progressive than a romantically fatalistic enterprise

Aesthetics · Art · Fatalism · Homosexuality · Human sexuality · Literature · Political radicalism · Political science · Politics · Romance · Sexology · Sociology · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · Gender Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Religious Studies