Those familiar with the corpus of classical references to sex between women may have noticed a gap in the material covered up to this point. In a chapter labeled “Epilogue: Lucian and the saturation of signs” Boehringer tackles Lucian’s Dialogue 5 from Dialogues of the Courtesans, in which the narrator describes her sexual interactions with a female** couple who present themselves as “married”.
kissing
The act of kissing (whether both persons press their lips together or whether one kisses some other body part such as the hand) has a much wider range of meanings in history than modern interpretation. Kisses could be used as a gesture of subission, as the sealing of an agreement, or to reflect non-romantic/erotic social bonds. Therefore the interpretation of kissing as indicating a romantic or erotic interaction usually requires understanding of the specific historic, social, and symbolic context.
LHMP entry
Petronius’ Satyricon
This is a card with an engraving dated 1820 titled “Love-a-la-mode or Two dear friends” which exists in multiple copies in various collections. Individual copies may be annotated in handwriting to add further information.
Introduction
Bray’s book was inspired by trying to understand the meaning behind various joint funeral memorials of pairs of non-related men. The study expanded to “the distinctive place friendship occupied in traditional society” in Europe from the 11th to the 18th centuries. The focus is on friendship as a public rather than a private phenomenon. He also touches on the relationship of homosexuality to same-sex friendship.
This article forms the core of Traub’s 2002 book by the same name, covered in entry #69. However summarizing this original article will provide a different angle and different details than I picked up from that previous entry.
Abbouchi tackled creating this edition and translation of the more complete of the two versions of the romance as a master’s thesis. [There are three related texts of the core story of Yde and Olive, two variants as part of the Huon of Bordeaux romance cycle, and one adapted (with different character names) as a miracle play. The second version of the romance is more abbreviated. The three vary in the details of how the relationship between the two women is presented, and in how the “problem” of a same-sex relationship is resolved.]
This is an invaluable book that collects all manner of classical Greek and Roman texts relevant to homosexuality in a single volume. I doubt that it’s exhaustive, especially with regard to male homosexuality, but Hubbard seems to have made special efforts to include female-oriented material. The material is organized chronologically and by literary genre, with an introductory discussion in each section to provide historic context.
Throughout western history, the act of kissing--of touching the lips either to another person’s lips or to another part of their anatomy--has had a wide variety of meanings and messages, as well as being a physical experience on its own. The essential ambiguity of what a kiss means in any particular context has been a part of its powerful symbolism and its use as a social tool, for good or ill. The physical act of kissing is an inherently intimate gesture (not necessarily in the sexual sense of “intimate”) in a way that actions like a handshake are not.
In 1599 in Mexico City, a 54 year old Dominican “beata” concluded her confession to the Inquisition by indicating she had nothing more to say “even though she might have more sins than the queen of England”.
Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme (commonly referred to as “Brantôme”) was a French writer of the 16th century. He was a soldier and courier and wrote several volumes of memoirs and biography, but the most well-known (or at least, notorious) section is known as Vies des Dames Galantes (The Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies) which, contrary to the rather positive title, is a scurrilous gossip-rag focusing on women’s sexual escapades and especially on the topic of wo
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