Historical Context[edit]

LGBT symbols - specifically lavender (also the color), calamus, green carnations, violets; hyacinths, narcissus, orchids (not an exclusively gay symbol), pansies (primarily a slur)
- possible others: begonia, buttercup, cypress, daisy, delphinium, lilac, lily, mandrake, mint/minty [5][6], peacock feathers, Lad's love
- Nautical star tattoo
Classical figures: Alcibiades, Antinous, Damon and Pythias, Ganymede, Hyacinthus, Hephaestion, Narcissus, Patroclus, Sacred Band of Thebes; other such classical mythological figures were less common
- Karl Heinrich Ulrichs coined the terms Uranian/Urning based on Aphrodite Urania (not to be confused with the muse of astronomy) in the mid-19th century. Aphrodite Urania's mainstream symbolism prior to Ulrichs's work was of "celestial" or "non-earthly" love, and had been approximated to homosexual love by Pausanias in Plato's Symposium. But I am curious how the concept may have developed or even just been referenced between Plato and Ulrichs.^[a] There's also a possible link of "non-earthly" love being reclaimed as a more positive variant of "unnatural".
  - "Der Gott Uranus und der Uranismus"
Classical works: Plato's Symposium
Judeo-Christian figures: David and Jonathan, Jesus and John the Apostle, Ruth and Naomi, St. Sebastian
"Have you heard the rumors about Marie Antoinette?" (mostly in the early 20th century)
Gay literature#Overview and history
- Queer (or perceived as queer) authors: Hafez, Sappho,^[b] Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde
- Literary figures^[c]: Shakespeare's "Fair Youth"

Broadly speaking, any person known to be or perceived as queer would continued to be a queer cultural touchstone thereafter (e.g. Frederick the Great and "Potsdamists")

^ My suspicions are related in part (but not completely) to Frederick the Great's gayngstiest poem, even though that's almost certainly about the muse, but if nothing else I wonder if it could have influenced Ulrichs.
^ "Lesbian" and "sapphic" were popularized as terms for female homosexuality in the late 19th century
^ Queerness was also often imputed to/assumed about their authors

Misdirection[edit]

Convenient Ambiguity[edit]

Books

Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers by Lillian Faderman

Locales[edit]

Renaissance: Florence, Italy (cf. the German word "Florenzer" as Renaissance-era slang meaning gay men)
18th century: Molly house, Tahiti (according to Bentham's essay)
19th century: Any place under the Napoleonic codes (usually France or Italy),
- In Britain: London - Cleveland Street, Jermyn Street (due to a Turkish bath raid), Vere Street

Historical Mainstream Perceptions[edit]

Description de l'isle des hermaphrodites, 1724 satire of France's Henri III
The Homosexual Society (UK, 1962)
"The public representation of homosexual men in seventeenth-century England – a corpus based view"

Historiography of Queer Identities[edit]

History of homosexuality#Historiographic considerations
Homosexuality in ancient Greece#Scholarship and controversy
"Greek love" (also "Socratic love") coined/formalized by German classicists circa 1750.

Books, Articles, etc.

Homosexuality: A Philosophical Inquiry by Michael Ruse
"Homosexuality" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
"Queer Anthropology" in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology
Homosexuality, which homosexuality?, essays from the International Conference on Gay and Lesbian Studies 1987
Making Sexual History by Jeffrey Weeks
Freud for Historians by Peter Gay

To sort through:

Open Library list of Historiography > Homosexuality

Internal Debate[edit]

Constructionist[edit]

Sexual orientation#Social constructionism
The History of Sex by Michel Foucault
How to Do the History of Homosexuality by David M. Halperin
- Review and criticism by Thomas K. Hubbard
The Making of the Modern Homosexual by Kenneth Plummer
The construction of homosexuality by David F. Greenberg

Essentialist[edit]

Trans Identities[edit]

Manion, Jen , "Language, Acts, and Identity in LGBT History" , in The Routledge History of Queer America ed. Don Romesburg (Abingdon: Routledge, 28 Mar 2018)

Issues among mainstream historians[edit]

Western-centrism and non-Western queer identities[edit]

Sundry sources of related interest[edit]

Early (1830) historical denialism (p. 306-313)
- Also cites "Sisimondi, Republiques Italiennes, tome III. p. 182" and "Knight on the Symbolical Language of Ancient Mythology, § 86" ; Acknowledgement that the Athenians were all about the superiority of erastes/eromenos relationships, citing Aristotle's Politics II.7.5.

Uncategorized sources[edit]

[1] My suspicions are related in part (but not completely) to Frederick the Great's gayngstiest poem, even though that's almost certainly about the muse, but if nothing else I wonder if it could have influenced Ulrichs.

[2] "Lesbian" and "sapphic" were popularized as terms for female homosexuality in the late 19th century

[3] Queerness was also often imputed to/assumed about their authors

[a]

[b]

[c]

Historical Context[edit]

Books[edit]

General[edit]

Ancient World[edit]

Middle Ages[edit]

Renaissance & Reformation[edit]

Age of Reason (Scientific Revolution & Enlightenment)[edit]

19th Century[edit]

Early self-ID and activism[edit]

20th Century (pre-Stonewallish)[edit]

Pre-Stonewallish Queer Culture[edit]

Slang, Euphemism, and Other Terminology[edit]

Symbolism and Iconography[edit]