LHMP

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 131 (previously 40b) - Interview with Heather Rose Jones

(Originally aired 2019/11/09 - listen here)

Transcript pending.

Show Notes

A series of interviews with authors of historically-based fiction featuring queer women.

In this episode we talk about:

In every era, the subjects tackled in academic debate are neither random nor comprehensive. They follow the interests and anxieties of the times. So it's not surprising to find that medieval writers applied their analytic and debating skills to a slightly different set of questions that the classical authors whose work they leaned on. One of the aspects that Cadden emphasizes (and that Laqueur downplayed) was the diverse and contradictory nature of medieval arguments and conclusions around sex.

I’ll confess that I had higher hopes of relevance to my purposes for this collection. Overall, the articles included here were more narrowly theory-oriented and of less general interest than I hoped. Also, the queer content was overwhelmingly male focused. I’d originally planned to do each article as a separate entry, but found myself skimming through many of them. In the end, it made much more sense to cover this publication as a single blog.

In this chapter, Cadden surveys the classical medical and philosophical writers who tackled the questions of the meanings of sex difference and the relationship of male and female (as well as mascuine and feminine). Different schools of thought are examined via a selection of key writers, discussing their basic principles and influences.