This section describes the nature of the Shibden Hall archives and their history. It covers the history of the several times the cipher has been assailed, from John Lister and Arthur Burrell’s initial cracking of the code, through several researchers who chose to exclude the references to sexuality from their deciphered transcripts, up through Whitbread’s publication of that previously censored material. The nature of Lister’s sexuality was known as early as 1892 but was suppressed for almost a century after that, with each new researcher re-discovering and re-erasing it.
France
Covering approximately the region of modern France in western Europe, or to topics relating to French-language culture in Europe.
LHMP entry
The introduction begins with an overview of Lister’s life and a brief explanation of her importance to various aspects of history. [Note: I’ll skip the background details, as I assume readers are familiar with the general history.]
This biographical article isn’t directly relevant to lesbianism, but provides an example of a woman who broke gender norms and was celebrated for it. I’ve added her to my list of fascinating 17th century women.
This is a general survey of sexuality in the 18th century. This summary only covers chapter 8 “Tribadism: A New Sort of Sin.” It opens with a quatrain from the satirical poem “The Adulteress” which unambiguously uses “tommy” in reference to sex between women, then move on to a summary of the life of Catherine Vizzani. The Vizzani text represents a medical view still focused on the one-sex model and the interpretation of lesbianism as a form of hermaphroditism.
This article discusses ideas of “inseparability” and “separation” in social relations from a number of different angles. The author does a fair amount of overlaying interpersonal and political experiences of in/separation in ways that don’t always feel pertinent. That is, that within the sphere of friendship, ‘inseparable” had a particular meaning regarding the merging of identities and the creation of an intimate private space inhabited by the friends, whereas within the political sphere, Roulston focuses on the pressure to separate women as a class from meaningful participation.
The typical focus on researching female same-sex desire in the early modern period centers around medical and legal records, the motif of physiological anomaly (the enlarged clitoris myth), and attempts to identify covert homoerotic themes in women’s writing. In contrast, pornography and popular culture (ballads and pamphlets) present a different view, even though they can rarely be interpreted as self-reporting of the women involved.
The author notes a lack of attention paid to mid-17th century literary pornography, a telling absence in considerations of gender-related shifts in this era, while also noting that feminist analysis of pornography focuses mostly on contemporary issues and treats the genre as monolithic and inherently misogynistic.
This article focuses on the highly specific genre of 18th century French erotic “convent novels,” part of the larger genre of libertine literature. Within the field of libertine novels, clerical themes—especially those relating to nuns and convents—are more common than references to prostitution and brothels. Such works combine the double-taboo of sex and religion. And the focus on convents brings in a third transgressive element: lesbianism. The author argues that there are enough similarities of theme and content to declare the “libertine convent novel” an identifiable genre.
This article examines the 17th century pornographic text L’Escole des filles (School for girls) not only as a sexual dialogue but as a satire (or at least reflection) of the fashion for pedagogical texts aimed at women and girls. This is illustrated (literally) by the frontispiece image in the 1668 edition, which depicts figures representing the two women in the dialogue studying a copy of the book itself in an academic setting.
This is a startlingly (I might say unexpectedly) excellent and comprehensive survey of lesbian-relevant history in Early Modern Europe. That actually makes it difficult to summarize (as well as difficult to tag, though I’ll give it my best shot). I think I’ll approach it by noting themes and topics, without necessarily trying to compose complete sentences.
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