ABSTRACT
Does sexuality have a history? Did people in biblical and classical antiquity, and across all classes of early modern and late nineteenthcentury Europe conceptualise male same-sex experiences similarly? And how do we conceive same-sex eroticism now? Do comparatively modern ideas of ‘inversion’ and ‘homo/heterosexuality’ make more sense to us than older conceptions, such as ‘sodomy’? In this chapter, I’ll introduce you to some of the most important and divergent ways of thinking about male same-sex eroticism. I’ll do so, first, in order to help you gain a stronger sense that sexuality has a history, that what we may currently, problematically and anachronistically conceptualise as ‘homosexuality’ was understood in quite different terms in the past and still is conceptualised differently in both our own and other cultural contexts. We’ll also start to think about some of the potential experiential and conceptual consequences of the overlap and apparent contradiction between the various available models.
