[PDF] Nameless Offences eBook

Author : H. G. Cocks
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 271 pages
File Size : 44,67 MB
Release : 2003-05-23
Category : History
ISBN : 0857718444

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What did the Victorians know about desire between men? Was it really 'the love that dare not speak its name'? Nameless Offences argues that even before Oscar Wilde and the rise of sexual science there was an open, public and concerted discussion of same-sex desire that went to the heart of Victorian notions of masculinity, civil society, class and identity. How did homosexuality come to be known as a 'secret vice', consigned to a secret place - the closet - when contemporaries regularly described its existence as widespread, threatening and even notorious? Nameless Offences asks where the closet came from and how the English learned to describe that which was 'nameless' and indescribable in this way. This groundbreaking book offers the definitive portrait of male homosexuality in the nineteenth century and includes many perceptive insights into what it reveals about the interaction between public and private morality which lay at the heart of Victorian England. 'Nameless Offences is a cogently argued and well-written book which contributes importantly to our understanding of the history of the legal regulation of sexual behavior between men in the 19th century...I cannot do justice...to the richness of his historical narrative...[he] has found gems of narrative detail...and woven them into a persuasive analysis.' - Morris B. Kaplan, Associate Professor of Philosophy, State University of New York

Author : Harry Cocks
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 26,29 MB
Release : 2003
Category : Gay men
ISBN : 9780755625314

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"Homosexuality became increasingly visible in 19th-century English society and problems related to the "secret vice" and the "love that dare not speak its name" go to the root of Victorian social and cultural history. This book shows how the homosexual "closet" was created. It was not just by the operation of the law and increasing police enforcement but also by the efforts of successive governments, politicians and journalists, and others involved in public debate, to marginalize homosexuality in civil society. The problem of disclosure and the risk of inflaming class divisions in an age of growing homosexual awareness accompanied an appetite for sexual scandal and the danger of blackmail. Prevention of slander and the vilification involved in scandals among the ruling classes were potent reasons to marginalize homosexuality and create the "closet". The Victorian masculine "character" was at issue, as the homosexual scandals of the 1880s exposed the gulf between notions of private and public morality."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Author : Kerry Powell
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 437 pages
File Size : 18,63 MB
Release : 2013-12-12
Category : Drama
ISBN : 1107729106

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Oscar Wilde was a courageous individualist whose path-breaking life and work were shaped in the crucible of his time and place, deeply marked by the controversies of his era. This collection of concise and illuminating articles reveals the complex relationship between Wilde's work and ideas, and contemporary contexts including Victorian feminism, aestheticism and socialism. Chapters investigate how Wilde's writing was both a resistance to and quotation of Victorian master narratives and genre codes. From performance history to film and operatic adaptations, the ongoing influence and reception of Wilde's story and work is explored, proposing not one but many Oscar Wildes. To approach the meaning of Wilde as an artist and historical figure, the book emphasises not only his ability to imagine new worlds, but also his bond to the turbulent cultural and historical landscape around him - the context within which his life and art took shape.

Author :
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 21,39 MB
Release : 2007-11-08
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780804763219

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This book investigates the elements that have developed as part of the definition of propriety and good behavior, and how the law has acted to protect respectable people and their reputations.

Author : Judith Flanders
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 544 pages
File Size : 48,17 MB
Release : 2014-07-15
Category : History
ISBN : 1466835451

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From the New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed author of The Invention of Murder, an extraordinary, revelatory portrait of everyday life on the streets of Dickens' London. The nineteenth century was a time of unprecedented change, and nowhere was this more apparent than London. In only a few decades, the capital grew from a compact Regency town into a sprawling metropolis of 6.5 million inhabitants, the largest city the world had ever seen. Technology—railways, street-lighting, and sewers—transformed both the city and the experience of city-living, as London expanded in every direction. Now Judith Flanders, one of Britain's foremost social historians, explores the world portrayed so vividly in Dickens' novels, showing life on the streets of London in colorful, fascinating detail.From the moment Charles Dickens, the century's best-loved English novelist and London's greatest observer, arrived in the city in 1822, he obsessively walked its streets, recording its pleasures, curiosities and cruelties. Now, with him, Judith Flanders leads us through the markets, transport systems, sewers, rivers, slums, alleys, cemeteries, gin palaces, chop-houses and entertainment emporia of Dickens' London, to reveal the Victorian capital in all its variety, vibrancy, and squalor. From the colorful cries of street-sellers to the uncomfortable reality of travel by omnibus, to the many uses for the body parts of dead horses and the unimaginably grueling working days of hawker children, no detail is too small, or too strange. No one who reads Judith Flanders's meticulously researched, captivatingly written The Victorian City will ever view London in the same light again.

Author : Jacob Bloomfield
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 50,9 MB
Release : 2023-08-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0520393333

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“A must-read for anyone interested in the history of drag performance.”—​Publishers Weekly A rich and provocative history of drag's importance in modern British culture. Drag: A British History is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag performance in modern Britain. With this book, Jacob Bloomfield provides fresh perspectives on drag and recovers previously neglected episodes in the history of the art form. Despite its transgressive associations, drag has persisted as an intrinsic, and common, part of British popular culture—drag artists have consistently asserted themselves as some of the most renowned and significant entertainers of their day. As Bloomfield demonstrates, drag was also at the center of public discussions around gender and sexuality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Victorian sex scandals to the "permissive society" of the 1960s. This compelling new history demythologizes drag, stressing its ordinariness while affirming its important place in British cultural heritage.

Author : Anne-Marie Kilday
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 900 pages
File Size : 44,32 MB
Release : 2010-06-03
Category : History
ISBN : 1137043210

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Providing a rounded and coherent history of crime and the law spanning the past 400 years, Histories of Crime explores the evolution of attitudes towards crime and criminality over time. Bringing together contributions from internationally acknowledged experts, the book highlights themes, current issues and key debates in the history of deviance and bad behaviour, including: - Marital cruelty and adultery - Infanticide - Murder - The underworld - Blasphemy and moral crimes - Fraud and white-collar crime - The death penalty and punishment. Individual case studies of violent and non-violent crime are used to explore the human means and motives behind criminal practice. Through these, the book illuminates society's wider attitudes and fears about criminal behaviour and the way in which these influence the law and legal system over time. This fascinating book is essential reading for students and teachers of history, sociology and criminology, as well as anyone interested in Britain's criminal past.

Author : Tommy Dickinson
Publisher : Manchester University Press
Page : 413 pages
File Size : 26,31 MB
Release : 2015-01-31
Category : Medical
ISBN : 1784990612

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Drawing on a rich array of source materials including previously unseen, fascinating (and often quite moving) oral histories, archival and news media sources, 'Curing queers' examines the plight of men who were institutionalised in British mental hospitals to receive ‘treatment’ for homosexuality and transvestism, and the perceptions and actions of the men and women who nursed them. It examines why the majority of the nurses followed orders in administering the treatment – in spite of the zero success-rate in ‘straightening out’ queer men – but also why a small number surreptitiously defied their superiors by engaging in fascinating subversive behaviours. 'Curing queers' makes a significant and substantial contribution to the history of nursing and the history of sexuality, bringing together two sub-disciplines that combine only infrequently. It will be of interest to general readers as well as scholars and students in nursing, history, gender studies, and health care ethics and law.

Author : Thomas Weber
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 13,34 MB
Release : 2008
Category : History
ISBN : 9780804700146

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At once a book about Oxford and Heidelberg University and about the character of European society on the eve of the World War I, Our Friend "The Enemy" challenges the idea that pre-1914 Europe was bound to collapse.