Psychoanalyzing the fiction of earlier ages has been a popular, if often misguided sport. In particular, when characters' intimate friendships are analyzed from contemporary angles, while ignoring the context when the work was written, we find out more about the literary critic's mind than the minds of the author or the characters.
LHMP
Blog entry
I'm not completely allergic to "lit crit" articles (by which I make a fine-grained distinction from "literary criticism" but perhaps one that is idiosyncratic), but I confess I find them far less useful for the Project than articles written from a historian's angle. I guess it's because lit crit feels like it's more about the reception of the topic in question by a modern audience than it is about the historic context of the topic itself.
Yes, once again I'm blogging an article that largely duplicates material that was covered more extensively in a different publication. Sigh. The work of a historian is not always exciting.
Once again, I have an article on a topic covered much more extensively in a publication I already blogged. Though in this case, by a different author. Thomas/ine Hall reminds us of the ways in which historic fixation on binary gender complicate the question of categorizing interactions as "same-sex" or "opposite-sex". There are several topics that I'll be discussing in the book version of the Project where it's inaccurate to characterize the topic as "lesbian" but that shed useful light on how historic societies would have viewed lesbian activity.
This is largely a "teaser article" for Jen Manion's book on female husbands. Since it largely duplicates material I've already blogged, I've just linked that write-up. But it does quote a medical journal article written by Joe Lobdell's psychiatrist, which includes some interesting points of language.
This is a very useful and detailed article comparing references to same-sex activity in Colonial-era religious opinions, legal codes, and popular opinion, all of which could be quite different in degree.
By what appears to be random coincidence, I have a handful of articles coming up that are preliminary versions of material I've already covered, or in one case, material more thoroughly covered by another article I'm about to blog. So there's a certain amount of "for completeness' sake" happening on the blog in the next week or so.
But hey! I've finished the substantial revisions to the Skinsinger stories. Only a couple of technical editing passes to go plus figuring out book formatting. How hard could it be?
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 316 - On the Shelf for June 2025 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2025/06/07 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for June 2025.
I’d say something about Pride Month, but here at the Lesbian Historic Motif Project, every month is Pride Month. Even so, I’ve committed to blogging a publication every day this month, just because.
Publications on the Blog
It's common to discover that my publication database includes preliminary versions of research that are later incorporated in a book. I often cover these out of order. (To the extent that I have any order at all.) But in this case, the present article discusses some of the background considerations for Boag's book and adds to understanding it, rather than being redundant. (I have a few articles coming up that ended up being redundant and I've largely simply cross-referenced them to the more complete versions.)
The concluding chapter of Boag's book on cross-dressers on the American frontier uses the case study of Joseph (Lucy) Lobdell to illustrate how stories of gender-crossing began being turned into stories of psychological illness. Lobdell was right on the cusp: considered a "curiosity" at first but then pathologized. (Though it doesn't help that Lobdell seems to have suffered from genuine mental illness, separate from their gender and sexuality.)
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