Saint Sebastian, by Carlo Saraceni (c1610-15), Castle Museum, Prague. The image of Sebastian pierced by arrows has regularly been described as homoerotic.[1]
Homoeroticism is sexual attraction between members of the same sex, including both male–male and female–female attraction.[2] The concept differs from the concept of homosexuality: it refers specifically to the desire itself, which can be temporary, whereas "homosexuality" implies a more permanent state of identity or sexual orientation. It has been depicted or manifested throughout the history of the visual arts and literature and can also be found in performative forms; from theatre to the theatricality of uniformed movements (e.g., the Wandervogel and Gemeinschaft der Eigenen). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is "pertaining to or characterized by a tendency for erotic emotions to be centered on a person of the same sex; or pertaining to a homo-erotic person."[3]
Though homoeroticism can differ from the interpersonal homoerotic—as a set of artistic and performative traditions, in which such feelings can be embodied in culture and thus expressed into the wider society[4]—some authors have cited the influence of personal experiences in ancient authors such as Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius in their homoerotic poetry.[5]
Overview and analysis
The term "homoerotic" carries with it the weight of modern classifications of love and desire that may not have existed in previous eras. Homosexuality as known today was not fully codified until the mid-20th century, though this process began much earlier:
Following in the tradition of Michel Foucault, scholars such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and David Halperin have argued that various Victorian public discourses, notably the psychiatric and the legal, fostered a designation or invention of the "homosexual" as a distinct category of individuals, a category solidified by the publications of sexologists such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) and Havelock Ellis (1859–1939), sexologists who provided an almost-pathological interpretation of the phenomenon in rather Essentialist terms, an interpretation that led, before 1910, to hundreds of articles on the subject in The Netherlands, Germany, and elsewhere. One result of this burgeoning discourse was that the "homosexual" was often portrayed as a corrupter of the innocent, with a predisposition towards both depravity and paederasty—a necessary portrayal if Late-Victorian and Edwardian sexologists were to account for the continuing existence of the "paederast" in a world that had suddenly become bountiful in "homosexuals."[6]
Male Nude Lying, by Aleksander Lesser (1837), National Museum, Warsaw. The painting was displayed in the temporary exhibition of homoerotic art Ars Homo Erotica.
Despite an ever-changing and evolving set of modern classifications, members of the same sex often formed intimate associations (many of which were erotic as well as emotional) on their own terms, most notably in the "romantic friendships" documented in the letters and papers of 18th- and 19th-century men and women.[7] These romantic friendships, which may or may not have included genital sex, were characterized by passionate emotional attachments and what modern thinkers would consider homoerotic overtones.
Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, held viewpoints on sexual orientation embedded in his psychoanalytic studies on narcissism and the Oedipus complex, where "rather than being a matter only for a minority of men who identify as homosexual or gay, homoeroticism is a part of the very formation of all men as human subjects and social actors."[9] Freud believed humans to be naturally bisexual, however also expressed interest in "the organic determinants of homoeroticism".[10]
In Asia, male eroticism also has its roots in traditional Japaneseshunga (erotic art), this tradition influenced contemporary Japanese artists, such as Tamotsu Yatō (photography artist), Sadao Hasegawa (painter) and Gengoroh Tagame (manga artist).
Female homoerotic art by lesbian artists has often been less culturally prominent than the presentation of lesbian eroticism by non-lesbians and for a primarily non-lesbian audience. In the West, this can be seen as long ago as the 1872 novel Carmilla, and is also seen in cinema in such popular films as Emmanuelle, The Hunger, Showgirls, and most of all in pornography. In the East, especially Japan, lesbianism is the subject of the manga subgenre yuri.
In many texts in the English-speaking world, lesbians have been presented as intensely sexual but also predatory and dangerous (the characters are often vampires)[citation needed] and the primacy of heterosexuality is usually re-asserted at the story's end. This shows the difference between homoeroticism as a product of the wider culture and homosexual art produced by gay men and women.[citation needed]
The most prominent example in the Western canon is that of the sonnets by William Shakespeare. Though some critics have made assertions, some in efforts to preserve Shakespeare's literary credibility, to its being non-erotic in nature, no critic has disputed that the majority of Shakespeare's sonnets concern explicitly male–male love poetry. The only other Renaissance artist writing in English to do this was the poet Richard Barnfield, who in The Affectionate Shepherd and Cynthia wrote fairly explicitly homoerotic poetry. Barnfield's poems, furthermore, are now widely accepted as a major influence upon Shakespeare's.[13]
Elisar von Kupffer's Lieblingminne und Freundesliebe in der Weltlitteratur (1900) and Edward Carpenter's Ioläus: An Anthology of Friendship (1902) were the first known notable attempts at homoerotic anthologies since The Greek Anthology. Since then, many anthologies have been published.
In the female–female tradition, there are poets such as Sappho, "Michael Field", and Maureen Duffy. Emily Dickinson addressed a number of poems and letters with homoerotic overtones to her sister-in-law Susan Huntington Gilbert.
Letters can also be potent conveyors of homoerotic feelings; the letters between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, two well-known members of the Bloomsbury Group, are full of homoerotic overtones characterized by this excerpt from Vita's letter to Virginia: "I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia [...] It is incredible to me how essential you have become [...] I shan't make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this --But oh my dear, I can't be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that." (January 21, 1926)
Some speculate that John the Baptist had homosocial or homoerotic behavior. In the Gospel of John (3:22–36), John the Baptist speaks of himself as the “friend of the bridegroom,” implying that the bridegroom of Christ (Matthew 9:15) is coming to meet his bride, though nothing specific to identify the bride. Jesus was a rabbi, a teacher, and all the rabbis at that time were married; there is no reference to a possible marriage.[23]
^Daugherty, Leo (2001). "The Question of Topical Allusion in Richard Barnfield's Pastoral Verse". In Boris, Kenneth; Klawitter, George (eds.). The Affectionate Shepherd: Celebrating Richard Barnfield. Pennsylvania: Susquehanna University Press. p. 45.
^Goss, Robert (1993). Jesus acted up : a gay and lesbian manifesto. San Francisco. ISBN0-06-063318-2. OCLC27013434.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
BURGER, Michael. The Shaping of Western Civilization: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment (University of Toronto Press, 2008), 308 pages. ISBN1-55111-432-1, ISBN978-1-55111-432-3
Lewes, Kenneth (1988), The Psychoanalytic Theory of Male Homosexuality, New York: New American Library, ISBN0-452-01003-9
Further reading
FALCON, Felix Lance. Gay Art: a Historic Collection [and history], ed. and with an introd. & captions by Thomas Waugh (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2006), 255 p. ISBN1-55152-205-5
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Homoeroticism.