The Representations of Desire Between Same-Sex Persons in Early Modern England

This research focuses on Early Modern Europe, especially England, and analyzes the discourse on physical and sexual contacts between males. In England and other Christian countries, sexual contacts between males were named Sodomy and Buggery, which people considered as the symbolic act to revolt against God and God’s creation. Sodomy and Buggery were treated as one of felonies of the time because they would bring chaos to the society. In the field of art and literature of reproducing Greek and Roman classics, on the other hand, it was possible for artists and writers to describe the sexual contacts between males, particularly between a grown man and a young boy, as something poetic and beautiful. 　In today’s society, the words homosexuality and homophobia are placed at the very opposites: homosexuality as the love and desire between same-sex persons and homophobia as the hatred against it. However, in Early Modern Europe, the unpleasant words Sodomy/Buggery and the homoerotic representation in art were not placed in the opposites of the axis of same-sex relationship. Rather, this research analyzes that Sodomy/Buggery and the homoerotic representation share three characteristics: 1) they represent the pagan other and the foreign other, 2) the physical contacts are forced, and 3) the mixture of hatred and erotic desire for boys are presented. In conclusion, this research discusses that the Sodomy/Buggery and homoerotic images are not contradictions but different representations in the same field of same-sex desire.