Homosexuals in history : a study of ambivalence in society, literature, and the arts

by A.L. Rowse

Book Overview

Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Tchaikovsky, Oscar Wilde, Ernst Rohm, Noel Coward - these men shared a sexual orientation that ran counter to mainstream society and defied their eras' ideas of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0880290110
• ISBN13: 9780880290111
• Release Date: January 1983
• Publisher: Dorset Press
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Excellent vignettes on significant gay men

A very readable and enjoyable book that provides informative sketches of a wide variety of gay men since the Rennaisance until the mid-20th century. The author provides just enough information so a reader can find other books devoted to a specific individual to read more. My only complaints are two, and one regards one of the book's strengths.That strength is the lack of footnotes, which makes the text flow wonderfully. However, the author at times draws conclusions about a particular individual without providing any information on how that conclusion was reached. He writes as though to an esoteric audience, and if you're not in the know, you may miss how a conclusion was reached.The second minor flaw is that in the latter part of the book where the author is describing people he had personal contact with, he goes way beyond what I think is acceptable interpretation of information and begins to editorialize on people and situations in ways I think inappropriate. It is a minor criticism, however. The book remains excellent.

"Light...calm and desirable..."

Though titled _Homosexuals in History_, this work isnot a dry, heavily footnoted, archly worded, jargonlaced, academic piece. Rather, it is immensely interesting,engrossing, enlightening, and an excellent background toserve as base for further academic or personal researchon the time periods and the personalities dealt with inthe book. Rowse gives his own perspective in the "Preface": "Thisbook is decidedly _not_ pornography. It is a serious study -- or series of studies -- in history and society,literature and the arts. Many men of genius or greateminence appear in it: kings like James I and Frederickthe Great, artists of the stature of Leonardo da Vinciand Michealangelo; intellectual giants such as Erasmusand Francis Bacon; many poets, writers and composers,scholars and collectors, soldiers and statesmen, patriots,politicians. The subject offers immense variety, men ofvery different psychological make-up, character, tastes,and gifts. Many more could have been included, but myaim has been to be representative, not exhaustive. AndI hope, by the way, that these studies may throw some light on the predisposing conditions to creativeness: in thepsychological rewards of ambivalence, the double responseto life, the sharpening of perception, the tensions thatlead to achievement." This work is not a mere recounting, but rather an intelligent,absorbing, often witty, even humorous, and most often verysympathetic account of these lives and the contexts in whichthey found themselves living and involved. Rowse does not deal with ancient times, for he says thathis interests as an historian began with the Renaisssance,"the transition from the medieval to the modern consciousness."There are 16 chapters, titled: Medieval Prelude; RenaissanceFigures; Elizabethans and their Contemporaries; FrancisBacon and the Court of James I; Courts and Coronets;Federick the Great and Some Germans; Regency Connoisseurs;Russia and Some Russians; Eminent Victorians; French Poetsand Novelists; From Ludwig II to Rohm; Edwardians andGeorgians; The Great War; Cambridge Apostles; A Handful ofAmericaans; and Cosmopolitan. Each of these chapters has the lives interwoven withperceptive, intelligent, engaging comments about thetimes, the values and hypocrisies, the acceptance --or lack of it (both by the societies -- and sometimescrushingly, by the individuals themselves... many sadexamples of the effects of repression, guilt, fear,diastrous attempts to "normalize"). The sections of most interest to me, and in which Rowsereally shines, are his extensive knowledge of the ins-and-outs of British cultural history. For he includes notmerely the eminent persons one might have encountered, butalso lesser known, but highly interesting and influentialpeople as well. Thus, in the excellent chapter on "EminentVictorians," we read: "In the [English] public schools theclassics were the be-all and end-all, the Alpha and Omega,of education. They portrayed the relaxed and naturalattitude of

An excellent historical biographical sketch of homosexuality

This book is good as a reading book or as a quick reference for scholarly research in the area of LGBT studies. I personally found Rowse's treatment of King James to be a good starting point for a paper I wrote on homosexuality in Jacobean England.