Homoeroticism

Homoeroticism refers to same-sex love and desire, most especially as it is depicted or manifested in the visual arts and literature. It can also be found in performative forms; from theatre to the theatricality of uniformed movements (e.g.: the Wandervogel and Gemeinschaft der Eigenen). Homoeroticism thus differs from the interpersonal homoerotic; because homoeroticism is a set of artistic and performative traditions, in which such feelings can be embodied in culture and thus expressed into the wider society.

Key introductory books

Classical & Medieval literature:

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• Murray & Roscoe. Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature. (1997).
• J.W. Wright. Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature (1997).
• Rictor Norton. The Homosexual Literary Tradition. (1974). (Greek, Roman & Elizabethan England).

Literature after 1850:

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• David Leavitt. Pages Passed from Hand to Hand : The Hidden Tradition of Homosexual Literature in English from 1748 to 1914. (1998).
• Timothy d'Arch Smith. Love In Earnest; some notes on the lives and writings of English 'Uranian' poets from 1889 to 1930. (1970).
• Mark Lilly. Gay Men's Literature in the Twentieth Century. (1993).
• Patricia Juliana Smith. Lesbian Panic: Homoeroticism in Modern British Women's Fiction. (1997).
• Gregory Woods. Articulate Flesh - male homoeroticism and modern poetry. (1989). (USA poets).

Visual Arts:

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• Jonathan Weinberg. Male Desire: The Homoerotic in American Art (2005).
• James M. Saslow. Pictures and Passions: A History of Homosexuality in the Visual Arts. (1999).
• Allen Ellenzweig. The Homoerotic Photograph: Male Images, Delacroix to Mapplethorpe. (1992).
• Thomas Waugh. Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall. (1996).
• Emmanuel Cooper. The Sexual Perspective: Homosexuality and Art in the Last 100 Years in the West. (1994).
• Claude J. Summers (editor). The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts. (2004).
• Harmony Hammond. Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History. (2000). (Post-1968 only)
• Laura Doan. Fashioning Sapphism: The Origins of a Modern English Lesbian Culture. (2001). (Post-WW1 in England)