Men in Love: Masculinity and Sexuality in the Eighteenth Century

by George Haggerty

Overview

Love in all its cultural and personal complexity is the focus of this book. While scholars of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century homoerotic culture have tended to focus on sexual behavior and the much-maligned figure of the sodomite, George E. Haggerty argues that the concepts of love and emotional intimacy offer a more useful perspective for understanding male-male relations of the time.

Haggerty considers male "identities" of many kinds: heroic friends, as found in seventeenth-century French romance and Restoration tragedy, and personal friends, as in the erotic relationships of Gray, Walpole, and West; fops and beaus, as depicted in Restoration and early eighteenth-century comedy and various satirical portraits; effeminate sodomites and mollies depicted in literature and sodomy trial accounts throughout the period; men of feeling and other figures in whom sensibility and sexuality are vividly interconnected. He also discusses libertines and sexual aggressors, especially as depicted in the pages of Gothic fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231110426
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	05/06/1999
Series:	Between Men-Between Women: Lesbian and Gay Studies
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

George Haggerty is professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of Unnatural Affections: Women and Fiction in the Later 18th Century and Gothic Fiction/Gothic Form, co-editor (with Bonnie Zimmerman) of Professions of Desire: Lesbian and Gay Studies in Literature, and editor of the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Gay History and Cultures.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Masculinity and Sexuality
Part 1: Masculinities
1. Heroic Friendships
2. Gay Fops/Straight Fops
3. Sensibility and Its Symptoms
Part 2: Sexualities
4. Gray's Tears
5. Beckford's Pederasty
6. Walpole's Secrets

What People are Saying About This

Jill Campbell

In a brilliantly simple and strikingly original move, Haggerty takes the necessary next step in our developing history of sexualities: he connects the accounts of sexual behaviors and their prohibition with stories of affect, personal style, and personal devotion. That is, he begins to tell the story of love--speaking, in a voice of great intelligence and varied feeling, of 'the love that dare not speak its name' -- and showing us the ways that eighteenth-century men spoke that love themselves. His account makes for challenging, exhilirating, and essential reading.

— Jill Campbell, author of Natural Masques: Gender and Identity in Fielding's Plays and Novels

Susan S. Lanser

Shifting the focus of inquiry from acts of sex to words of love, George Haggerty expands the borders of gay scholarship to explore the verbal textures of men's intimacies and desires. In the process, he reveals the ways in which eighteenth-century ideologies of sensibility, friendship, and masculinity enabled startlingly public yet potentially subversive avowals of same-sex love and persuasively demonstrates the power of affection, independent of erotic acts, to challenge social norms. Deeply learned, theoretically sophisticated, and eminently readable, Men in Love opens fresh new directions for the study of both gender and sexuality.

— Susan S. Lanser, author of Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice

Joseph Roach

From the heroic theater of Dryden's plays to the secret theater of Walpole's letters, George Haggerty's Men in Love illuminates an extraordinary range of expressive possibilities in eighteenth-century masculine friendship, a love that dares to speak its many names.

— Joseph Roach, author of Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performances

Joseph Roach

From the heroic theater of Dryden's plays to the secret theater of Walpole's letters, George Haggerty's Men in Love illuminates an extraordinary range of expressive possibilities in eighteenth-century masculine friendship, a love that dares to speak its many names.

Editorial Reviews

Like Rowland's, the book should be seen as one vista on the trek to recover how modern Western sexuality evolved its particular taxonomy. Highly recommended, particularly for graduate students through faculty.

Choice - D. N. Mager

In this brief and provocative study, Haggerty moves from Restoration texts such as Rochester's 'The Imperfect Enjoyment, ' Dryden's All for Love, and Lee'sThe Rival Queens to the later eighteenth-century writings by and about Gray, Beckford, and Walpole....This book's greatest contribution to the study of the history of gender/sexuality is the author's provocative claims about the fundamentals of heroic friendship, modern bourgeois subjectivity, and sensibility....Haggerty's arguments are convincing and compelling. His style is one which makes the often new and provocative ideas he presents seem self-evident....Haggerty's book makes a rich and unique contribution to the study of the history of gender and sexuality. Students and scholars in the field will surely benefit from his critical insights.

Laura L. Mendelson

Like Rowland's, the book should be seen as one vista on the trek to recover how modern Western sexuality evolved its particular taxonomy. Highly recommended, particularly for graduate students through faculty.

D. N. Mager

Shifting the focus of inquiry from acts of sex to words of love, George Haggerty expands the borders of gay scholarship to explore the verbal textures of men's intimacies and desires. In the process, he reveals the ways in which eighteenth-century ideologies of sensibility, friendship, and masculinity enabled startlingly public yet potentially subversive avowals of same-sex love and persuasively demonstrates the power of affection, independent of erotic acts, to challenge social norms. Deeply learned, theoretically sophisticated, and eminently readable, Men in Love opens fresh new directions for the study of both gender and sexuality.

Susan S. Lanser

From the heroic theater of Dryden's plays to the secret theater of Walpole's letters, George Haggerty's Men in Love illuminates an extraordinary range of expressive possibilities in eighteenth-century masculine friendship, a love that dares to speak its many names.

Joseph Roach

In a brilliantly simple and strikingly original move, Haggerty takes the necessary next step in our developing history of sexualities: he connects the accounts of sexual behaviors and their prohibition with stories of affect, personal style, and personal devotion. That is, he begins to tell the story of love—speaking, in a voice of great intelligence and varied feeling, of 'the love that dare not speak its name' -and showing us the ways that eighteenth-century men spoke that love themselves. His account makes for challenging, exhilirating, and essential reading.

Jill Campbell

Men in Love makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the period. This is a fine example of gay studies casting light on a whole culture.

Gregory Woods

Addresses such questions as what male-male desire in the 18th century was, how it was represented in literary and historical documents, what it has to do with notions of femininity and masculinity as they were being formulated throughout the century, how love between men was expressed, to what degree it can be categorized as erotic, and whether even the most erotic male-male interaction has anything to do with what people think of as homosexuality two centuries later. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknew.com)

Booknews

Men in Love makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of this period. This is a fine example of gay studies casting light on a whole culture.
—Times Literary Supplement

Woods

Men in Love makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the period. This is a fine example of gay studies casting light on a whole culture.

Times Literary Supplement (London) - Gregory Woods

George Haggerty's book Men in Love is a complex and persuasive discussion of the phenomenon of public expression of male-male love.

The Eighteenth Century : A Current Biblography - Kathleen Kincade

George Haggerty's book Men in Love is a complex and persuasive discussion of the phenomenon of public expression of male-male love.

— Kathleen Kincade

The Eighteenth Century : A Current Biblography

Like Rowland's, the book should be seen as one vista on the trek to recover how modern Western sexuality evolved its particular taxonomy. Highly recommended, particularly for graduate students through faculty.

Choice - D.N. Mager

George Haggerty's book Men in Love is a complex and persuasive discussion of the phenomenon of public expression of male-male love.

— Kathleen Kincade

The Eighteenth Century: A Current Biblography

Men in Love makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the period. This is a fine example of gay studies casting light on a whole culture.

— Gregory Woods

Times Literary Supplement (London)

Like Rowland's, the book should be seen as one vista on the trek to recover how modern Western sexuality evolved its particular taxonomy. Highly recommended, particularly for graduate students through faculty.

— D. N. Mager

Choice