Byron and Greek Love: Homophobia in 19th Century England

by Louis Crompton

Book Overview

A highly praised and very readable exploration of Lord Byron and his time. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520051726
• Release Date: January 1985
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Reviewed Reviewers

Louis Crompton's *Byron and Greek Love* sullied the reputations of many reviewers attemptingto dismiss it as impugning the reputation of a major poet. In 1985 it was still improprietous torecognize the homophilic tradition - as if homosexuals would claim more biographicalpedestals and historical niches than they were entitled to. Crompton's *Byron* was held to be improprietous in the extreme.Curiously, few objected to calling Adolf Hitler (...) even though he was blatantly heterosexualand overtly homophobic - except, perhaps, those who objected to the use of "the perfectly niceword (...)" for `sodomite', the same who never objected to losing "perfectly nice words" like`faggot', `pansy', and `sissy'. There was always a value-added tax on homophilic words whilehomophobic words spewed forth like vomit at a frat party. As Gertrude Stein suggested: by any other name,the same.If anyone doubted Crompton's overview of 4800 years of gay history, much of which he himself learned in the (...) oral tradition, his stupendous new *Homosexuality and Civilization* must allay all doubts about his *Byron and Greek Love*; it remains the definitive contextual setting of the complex homophilic man Byron and his work.Today the public is getting used to the (...) reality that civilization is unnatural and that unnatural people have contributed to that reality out of all proportion to their expectable numbers.As homosexuals came out, their oral tradition had to yield to the written. In that revelation, Crompton is a major expositor. He is amongst the (...)historians who decided, back inthe 1950s, that, while homosexuals had to lie to survive, they would not lie about their own history and the heritage that they sought to pass on.