Chapter 2: Gender Transgression and Same-Sex Desire Before the Nineteenth Century

A Student's Guide to Essential Primary Sources
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https://doi.org/10.3735/9781961844353.book-part-006

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Abstract

The period between the ancient world and the nineteenth century has many names. In general, scholars refer to this period using the Latin term medium ævum, or the “Middle Ages” (hence the adjective “medieval”), and the early modern period to distinguish it from the ancient past and the industrial revolutions that followed it. But, we should keep in mind that people living during this period would not have thought of themselves as being in the middle of anything—their world was as modern to them as ours is to us. Historians like to categorize and organize, and thus we fit this period into a box to make sense of it. Much the same can be said of ideas about gender and same-sex desire in this period.

Author(s): Jacob Bell, Texas Tech University

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