Jennifer Ingleheart
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198819677
- eISBN:
- 9780191859991
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198819677.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The Classics were core to the curriculum and ethos of the intensely homosocial Victorian and Edwardian public schools. Yet ancient homosexuality and erotic pedagogy were problematic to the ...
More
The Classics were core to the curriculum and ethos of the intensely homosocial Victorian and Edwardian public schools. Yet ancient homosexuality and erotic pedagogy were problematic to the educational establishment, which expurgated classical texts with sexual content. This volume analyses the intimate nexus between the Classics, sex, and education primarily through the figure of the schoolmaster Philip Gillespie Bainbrigge (1890–1918), whose clandestine writings explore homoerotic desires and comment on classical education. It reprints Bainbrigge’s surviving works: Achilles in Scyros (a verse drama featuring a cross-dressing Achilles and a Chorus of lesbian schoolgirls) and a Latin dialogue between schoolboys (with a translation by Jennifer Ingleheart). Like other similarly educated men of his era, Bainbrigge used Latin as an intimate homoerotic language; after reading Bainbrigge’s dialogue, A. E. Housman went on to write a scholarly article in Latin about ancient sexuality, Praefanda. This volume, therefore, also examines the parallel of Housman’s Praefanda, its knowing Latin, and bold challenge to mainstream morality. Bainbrigge’s works show the queer potential of Classics. His underground writings owe more to a sexualized Rome than an idealized Greece, offering a provocation to the study of Classical Reception and the history of sexuality. Bainbrigge refuses to apologize for homoerotic desire, celebrates the pleasures of sex, and disrupts mainstream ideas about the Classics and the relationship between ancient and modern. As this volume demonstrates, Rome is central to Queer Classics: it provided a male elite with a liberating erotic language, and offers a variety of models for same-sex desire.Less
The Classics were core to the curriculum and ethos of the intensely homosocial Victorian and Edwardian public schools. Yet ancient homosexuality and erotic pedagogy were problematic to the educational establishment, which expurgated classical texts with sexual content. This volume analyses the intimate nexus between the Classics, sex, and education primarily through the figure of the schoolmaster Philip Gillespie Bainbrigge (1890–1918), whose clandestine writings explore homoerotic desires and comment on classical education. It reprints Bainbrigge’s surviving works: Achilles in Scyros (a verse drama featuring a cross-dressing Achilles and a Chorus of lesbian schoolgirls) and a Latin dialogue between schoolboys (with a translation by Jennifer Ingleheart). Like other similarly educated men of his era, Bainbrigge used Latin as an intimate homoerotic language; after reading Bainbrigge’s dialogue, A. E. Housman went on to write a scholarly article in Latin about ancient sexuality, Praefanda. This volume, therefore, also examines the parallel of Housman’s Praefanda, its knowing Latin, and bold challenge to mainstream morality. Bainbrigge’s works show the queer potential of Classics. His underground writings owe more to a sexualized Rome than an idealized Greece, offering a provocation to the study of Classical Reception and the history of sexuality. Bainbrigge refuses to apologize for homoerotic desire, celebrates the pleasures of sex, and disrupts mainstream ideas about the Classics and the relationship between ancient and modern. As this volume demonstrates, Rome is central to Queer Classics: it provided a male elite with a liberating erotic language, and offers a variety of models for same-sex desire.
Jennifer Ingleheart
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198819677
- eISBN:
- 9780191859991
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198819677.003.0007
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The conclusion explores the wider implications of the argument of this book, and of the study of Bainbriggean classicism, or Queer Classics. The most queer Classical Receptions look to Rome for a ...
More
The conclusion explores the wider implications of the argument of this book, and of the study of Bainbriggean classicism, or Queer Classics. The most queer Classical Receptions look to Rome for a range of transgressive models of sexual desire and pleasure, rather than turning to Greece to apologize for same-sex love. In private writings, Bainbrigge and others are free to focus on sex and its role in the ancient and modern worlds. Queer classicists are fascinated by the body—the ancient body and the pleasures it experienced, as well as the modern embodiment of classical education. Queer classicists remind us that the body and sexuality cannot be separated from the study of Classics—an important insight for a discipline in which expurgation of (homo)sexual material in classical texts at school is still all too common.Less
The conclusion explores the wider implications of the argument of this book, and of the study of Bainbriggean classicism, or Queer Classics. The most queer Classical Receptions look to Rome for a range of transgressive models of sexual desire and pleasure, rather than turning to Greece to apologize for same-sex love. In private writings, Bainbrigge and others are free to focus on sex and its role in the ancient and modern worlds. Queer classicists are fascinated by the body—the ancient body and the pleasures it experienced, as well as the modern embodiment of classical education. Queer classicists remind us that the body and sexuality cannot be separated from the study of Classics—an important insight for a discipline in which expurgation of (homo)sexual material in classical texts at school is still all too common.
Jennifer Ingleheart
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198819677
- eISBN:
- 9780191859991
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198819677.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter analyses Bainbrigge’s Latin dialogue between two schoolboys, in which an older boy introduces the younger to the pleasures of sex. It explores Bainbrigge’s treatment of sex in the light ...
More
This chapter analyses Bainbrigge’s Latin dialogue between two schoolboys, in which an older boy introduces the younger to the pleasures of sex. It explores Bainbrigge’s treatment of sex in the light of much less sexually frank contemporary examples of clandestine homoerotic writing (including E. M. Forster’s Maurice), and argues that Latin was crucial in allowing Bainbrigge to discuss homoerotic desires and acts in a frank, yet still coded manner. It explores parallel examples of Latin’s use as a homoerotic language and interrogates how Bainbrigge’s sexual vocabulary draws on classical Latin as well as a longer tradition of neo-Latin pornographic works. The chapter’s conclusion explores the queer temporality of Bainbrigge’s hybrid classical/modern world and his parody of erotic pedagogy. It also analyses Bainbrigge’s comments on the censorship of sex in the classical schoolroom, and on classical education more broadly.Less
This chapter analyses Bainbrigge’s Latin dialogue between two schoolboys, in which an older boy introduces the younger to the pleasures of sex. It explores Bainbrigge’s treatment of sex in the light of much less sexually frank contemporary examples of clandestine homoerotic writing (including E. M. Forster’s Maurice), and argues that Latin was crucial in allowing Bainbrigge to discuss homoerotic desires and acts in a frank, yet still coded manner. It explores parallel examples of Latin’s use as a homoerotic language and interrogates how Bainbrigge’s sexual vocabulary draws on classical Latin as well as a longer tradition of neo-Latin pornographic works. The chapter’s conclusion explores the queer temporality of Bainbrigge’s hybrid classical/modern world and his parody of erotic pedagogy. It also analyses Bainbrigge’s comments on the censorship of sex in the classical schoolroom, and on classical education more broadly.
Melinda Powers
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198777359
- eISBN:
- 9780191823077
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198777359.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter discusses Allain Rochel’s Bacchae (2007), Tim O’Leary’s The Wrath of Aphrodite (2008), and Aaron Mark’s Another Medea (2013), based on Euripides’ Bacchae, Hippolytus, and Medea ...
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This chapter discusses Allain Rochel’s Bacchae (2007), Tim O’Leary’s The Wrath of Aphrodite (2008), and Aaron Mark’s Another Medea (2013), based on Euripides’ Bacchae, Hippolytus, and Medea respectively. Through their use of performance strategies such as ‘camp’ (an aesthetic characterized by irony, ostentation, and exaggeration), these productions engage in queer performative counter-discourses that challenge popular stereotypes of gay men, such as the ‘fit, fashion-savvy sidekick’ and the ‘tragic’ or ‘suicidal homosexual’. In the process, they illustrate what José Esteban Muñoz has defined as ‘disidentification’ or ‘the survival strategies the minority subject practices in order to negotiate a phobic majoritarian public sphere that continuously elides or punishes subjects who fail to conform to normative culture’ (1999, 4). Thus, through reframing ancient mythological narratives, these productions serve not only to queer classical drama but also to classicize queer performance.Less
This chapter discusses Allain Rochel’s Bacchae (2007), Tim O’Leary’s The Wrath of Aphrodite (2008), and Aaron Mark’s Another Medea (2013), based on Euripides’ Bacchae, Hippolytus, and Medea respectively. Through their use of performance strategies such as ‘camp’ (an aesthetic characterized by irony, ostentation, and exaggeration), these productions engage in queer performative counter-discourses that challenge popular stereotypes of gay men, such as the ‘fit, fashion-savvy sidekick’ and the ‘tragic’ or ‘suicidal homosexual’. In the process, they illustrate what José Esteban Muñoz has defined as ‘disidentification’ or ‘the survival strategies the minority subject practices in order to negotiate a phobic majoritarian public sphere that continuously elides or punishes subjects who fail to conform to normative culture’ (1999, 4). Thus, through reframing ancient mythological narratives, these productions serve not only to queer classical drama but also to classicize queer performance.
