Homosexuality and Civilization | 
 enlarge | Author: Louis Crompton
Publisher: Belknap Press
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 89247
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 648
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.5
ISBN: 0674022335
Dewey Decimal Number: 909
EAN: 9780674022331
ASIN: 0674022335
Publication Date: October 31, 2006
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Product Description
How have major civilizations of the last two millennia treated people who were attracted to their own sex? In a narrative tour de force, Louis Crompton chronicles the lives and achievements of homosexual men and women alongside a darker history of persecution, as he compares the Christian West with the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, Arab Spain, imperial China, and pre-Meiji Japan. Ancient Greek culture celebrated same-sex love in history, literature, and art, making high claims for its moral influence. By contrast, Jewish religious leaders in the sixth century B.C.E. branded male homosexuality as a capital offense and, later, blamed it for the destruction of the biblical city of Sodom. When these two traditions collided in Christian Rome during the late empire, the tragic repercussions were felt throughout Europe and the New World. Louis Crompton traces Church-inspired mutilation, torture, and burning of "sodomites" in sixth-century Byzantium, medieval France, Renaissance Italy, and in Spain under the Inquisition. But Protestant authorities were equally committed to the execution of homosexuals in the Netherlands, Calvin's Geneva, and Georgian England. The root cause was religious superstition, abetted by political ambition and sheer greed. Yet from this cauldron of fears and desires, homoerotic themes surfaced in the art of the Renaissance masters--Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Sodoma, Cellini, and Caravaggio--often intertwined with Christian motifs. Homosexuality also flourished in the court intrigues of Henry III of France, Queen Christina of Sweden, James I and William III of England, Queen Anne, and Frederick the Great. Anti-homosexual atrocities committed in the West contrast starkly with the more tolerant traditions of pre-modern China and Japan, as revealed in poetry, fiction, and art and in the lives of emperors, shoguns, Buddhist priests, scholars, and actors. In the samurai tradition of Japan, Crompton makes clear, the celebration of same-sex love rivaled that of ancient Greece. Sweeping in scope, elegantly crafted, and lavishly illustrated, Homosexuality and Civilization is a stunning exploration of a rich and terrible past. (20031130)
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 4.5 Stars for a Fascinating Reading on Well-Researched Chapters of Homosexual Civilization - Lacking Some Chapters May 23, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I read the original hard cover edition of 2003. It has 640 pages, some 100 color pictures and some 450 regular text pages.
It covers Greece, Judea, the Roman Empire, Western Europe (mainly Italy, Spain [Christian and Muslim], France, England, the Netherlands and Prussia [historic part of Germany]), as well as China and Japan. That seems to be Crompton's (or the publisher's) definition of civilization. Considering that once the biggest cities were located in (sub-Saharan) Africa, that there were urban societies in the pre-Columbian Americas and that civilization's early roots are located in countries such as Babylon, Persia and Egypt, virtually all of which with known homosexualities, this book is not as exhaustive as its page number suggests. Did I mention EASTERN Europe? Maybe it's just an ill-advised title.
The book sheds light on the various forms of persecutions and shares one and the other surprise. For example the most deadly persecution before Hitler having occurred in today's model country, the Netherlands. Today's most homophobic state of Germany, Bavaria, adopting Prussia's anti-homosexual laws not before the German unification of 1871 and Japan of all the places (i.e. the somewhat un-colonized ones) across the globe doing the same two years later. Of course, more positive episodes of the last some 25 hundred years are covered also. It would have been much more positive, if earlier times would have been included, such as ancient Egypt. Please be aware that Greek-Egyptian Cleopatra is closer to the Space Shuttle than the erection of the pyramids, i.e. that a lot of civilization isn't only lost in this book geographically, but also on the timeline.
Overall, this book is a very good introduction into the issue. Just don't think it's exhaustive, just because you can outweigh your local phone book with it. You may be interested in Colonialism and Homosexuality, Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature, Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities, and "leaving civilization", in the myriad concepts of love life in Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia (Studies in Melanesian Anthropology). Louis Crompton criticizes John Boswell's classic Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century, yet in principle, I find it worth to read nevertheless. You may attempt to outweigh Crompton's book with Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity (Stonewall Inn Editions).
A very learned essay on the rise and, one opes, fall, of homophobic racism March 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Homosexuality has always been a natural variation of human nature: this has been aacknowledged universally, till a misjudged analogy (homosexuality equals idolatry of foreign gods) has been transfonded in a monstruously erroneous condemnation. This history shows that no moral one can rationally propound can be advance to condemn something that doesnt'do anyone any harm, so paranoid haters had to fabricate those reasons, basing them in entirely erroneous readings of biblical hepisodes. After the religion that Our Saviour founded, a religion He intended based on Love and Understanding, not on hatred, the montrous lies against homosexuals resulted in horrendous hate crimes justified by religious motives and sacred zeal. So sad are the chapter where homophobic racism, like antisemithic racism, was unleashed wit demonic gusto un innocent people.
Then came Enlightenment, and homophobia began to be questioned, legislations began to be reformed.
A book I recommend!
 One-handed reading for the fire-and-brimstone crowd! August 12, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I agree with other positive ("hysterical?") reviewers about this big tasty brick of a book on a subject that deserves many more such studies. This is my kind of book, scholarly, logical, thoughtful, articulate, and thorough. But could have been a bit more sexy.
I must add a few suggestions to round out the text. These additions along with some cuts would not expand the work very much. Perhaps for the second paperback edition?
The events in the first third are undistiguished and repetitive despite the vast time and subjects covered. Poems, punishment, etc. I kept wanting to know what were dinner parties like, dating, conversation, style changes, were there makeout sections in the theaters and foxholes, and did parents punish or pimp their children, or both? The pederasty is almost unrelenting, and not being a fan I worked my way through the early material but it was rarely sexy. The lesser characters and stories could be trimmeed. I'm a fan of ancient histoy and I felt for readers unfamiliar with the glossed-over details of these worlds. Differences in historical settings and characters should be brought alive. If you've ever read Mary Renault's novels or "Julian" by Gore Vidal you'll know what I mean.
The author gives little sense of who's writing the book aside from the introduction and conclusion, which is balanced about christianity's influences and should perhaps be read first (this from an art-loving agnostic). I'd like anecdotes about the author's adventures researching, traveling, meeting people, and comparing texts unique to this project and subject..
Subtitles! This isn't a request to make scholarship seem juvenile but I'm a fan of frequent chapter breaks, section headings, and subtitles when the topic changes ---- which happens in this book sometimes within a paragraph. They help the reader find and remember things easier.
And there were fifty typos too many.
Like I alluded to above, I'd like more adult-to-adult examples among the pederastic societies. Being of the modern western world, I always assumed that pederasty and Kinsey-6 homosexuals were each about 5-10% of men, and almost 100% scorned, but the idea of a huge percentage of paired-off ancient army buddies makes my head spin with confusion and delight!
Homosexuality Throughout History May 21, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Take a stroll through history and look at how homosexuality has developed over the centuries. You'll read about religious views of homosexuality and gay leaders.
A useful and well-researched survey April 13, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Louis Crompton has set out to provide us with an overview of homosexuality through history, no small task, but an admirable one, for homosexuality has typically been excluded from discussion, particularly in Western culture. Crompton basically covers from the time of the ancient Greeks, who revered male-male relationships, through the end of the 18th century, by which time Judeo-Christian beliefs had subjected homosexuals to centuries of persecutions. In addition, chapters on homosexuality in China and Japan help to provide a counterpoint to European traditions. This book, along with Graham Robb's Strangers: Homosexual Love in the 19th Century, brings us up to the 20th century, when the historical record is more complete.
Crompton is a good writer, and good at pulling information together. His critiques of other writers, like John Boswell, are always supported by facts. And if I wish the book did more than simply allude to the presence of positive same-sex relationships in Africa, amid Native Americans, and in parts of Southern Asia, you can't have everything. I do, however, note that failure to discuss the importance of Filippo Brunelleschi in the chapter on the Italian Renaissance seems to me an unfortunate omission. By simply beginning with Donatello (who was, by most accounts, Brunelleschi's "boyfriend" and apprentice), we miss the chance to see that homosexuality was a major personality trait in the man perhaps most responsible for sparking the Italian Renaissance as a whole. Perhaps Crompton could have left out one or the other account of servants being jailed or burned to note that. But overall, this book provides a solid, readable overview of homosexuals over the course of the last 2500 years, and I'm grateful to have read it.
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