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Example research essay topic: 19 Th Century Lesbian And Gay - 2,374 words

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Censorship and Omission of Homosexual Fact/Hints in British Literature and History According to Lawrence J. Hatterer, author of Changing Homosexuality in the Male, Homosexual is one who is motivated, in adult life, by a definite preferential erotic attraction to members of the same sex and who usually, but not necessarily, engages in overt sexual relations with them. The homo in the term homosexual is a Greek term meaning same which is usually mistaken by many to have the similar meaning as the Latin homo, in the term homo sapiens which means human being or man. Sexual, on the other hand, is coming from a Latin root word sexus meaning male or female sex, gender. So literally, homosexual, means of the same sex or gender. People of these types are commonly referred to as gay in males and lesbian in females but with the common misconception and normal connection attributed to the term with man, most people use the term to refer to males and do not include the females.

From earliest history to this modern time, the issue on homosexuality has been one of the main subject and concern of human culture. It is seen as something elective, even somewhat abnormal and should be a practice total secrecy or discretion. During the advent of the 19 th century, homosexuality dramatically gained favorable view that it is being described as the only one with defined and relatively stable sexual orientation, yet it is plagued with condemnation worldwide due to the existence of traditional cultures. These cultures are usually armed with conservative notions which are mostly rooted on sociological, ideological and religious doctrines. In the Christian faith, for example, even at the time of Moses (The Old Testament), homosexuality is considered as blasphemy and a sinful act.

The Christians Holy Bible has specifically denounces same-sex relationship as the story about the ill-fated Sodom and Gomorrah illustrated. Due to the peoples homosexual activities of the people in both places, God bring forth their destruction. This particular story is strongly inculcated and ingrained in the minds, and perhaps even in the souls of Christians that there are many literary works that are influenced by the biblical story. In fact during the post-classical West in the 12 th century, the article of Peter Cantor is largely based on it, shaded with biblical staging entitled "On Sodomy" which has strikingly condemned the intercourse of men with men and women with women and tagged it as "ignominious and unspeakable. " Given the existence of these traditional or shall we say ultra-conservative cultures, homosexuality is either perceived to be nonexistent or something that is utterly abhorrent that enlightened and cultured society should never speak about it. These cultures always attach the stigmatic reflection of shame and sin, of unspeakable-ness to homosexuality that utter silence on anything about it seems to be the norm of society.

The consequence of this attitude somehow and unknowingly to some extend lead to what had become the homosexual censorship. In literary writings, where strong showing of censorship were noted, it is believe to have started way back, but we can only substantiate these claims if there are actual facts and records that exist. Many ancient writings from ancient Greece and Rome which tackled the subject of homosexuality when translated into English were amended and censored. Far more appalling is the fact that there were portions of the old sources which were totally expurgated from the translated copies. This form of censorship is called heterosexualizing, an editing technique which converts male characterization into a female character to portray a normal male-female emotional involvement. It also engages in the removal of incriminating texts which are perceived to be unutterable and inexpressible in civilized societies.

This is usually done by editors, translators, critics and / or biographers. The earliest account of heterosexualizing censorship is during the early part of the Renaissance. One literary classic which suffered such fate was Plato's Symposium, a philosophical dialogue on the nature of love written sometime after 385 BC. During its translation into Latin by Ficino, the male to male nature of love implied in the Symposium was deliberately converted into a spiritualized love, erasing the eroticism that is obliquely present in the original Greek work. The translators commentary even strengthened and pronounced the intended exclusion of the fact.

The first English translation of the same work in the eighteenth century by Flower Sydehham far surpasses the censorship perpetrated by Ficino. One item is the phrase, an army of lovers was translated to an army of knights and ladies. In 1640, John Benson performed the same censorship to Shakespeare's Sonnets when he heterosexual ized its first collected edition of Shakespeare's poems. Disappointingly, this falsified text remained as the only available version of the Sonnets for 140 years. There were countless other authors who have encountered the same fate in 19 th century England. To mention a few, they were: Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose self-confessed attraction to a man was manifested in his poems but was expurgated by his editor; there was Walt Whitman, another English literary giant who was heterosexual ized by many of his commentators to cover-up his homosexuality; Oscar Wilde whose letters to Alfred Douglas from prison was misrepresented and altered to omit all references to Wilde's and Douglas love affair.

Usually, the writers own editors were the ones who have strong influence over the censorship of the works. In Britain, blatant censorship of this kind is also prevalent not only because of institutionalized or governmental or editorial censorship but also by familial censorship wherein families do something to control the publication of a members homosexual literary work. This is true to Michelangelo's romantic poems to other males and his fifty sets of passionate poems dedicated to Checchino Branch. When his grandnephew prepared his poems for their first collected edition in 1623, all the HEs were changed to SHEs as well as deliberately omitting other text. The fifty sets of passionate memorial poems were reduced to five.

Another writer who received a harsh treatment from his own family was John Addington Symonds. The family was so scandalized that they had his name removed from all future editions of Sexual Inversion, a book he co-authored with Havelock Ellis. In Albert Tennyson's case, it was his son, Hallam who committed the same blunder when he published his fathers biography in 1897. All commentary about his father by several critics that might have suggested homosexuality in Lord Alfred Tennyson after publishing the poem, In Memoriam A. H. H.

was deleted. One more type of censorship which is mitigating in a way is self censorship. It is said to have existed even before the Renaissance wherein homosexual writers / authors censor their own works to refrain from condemnation of society. Most of them either talk about homosexuality obliquely or totally disregard the whole subject. Most of these homosexual authors withheld any frank homosexual writing they have produced from publication like the case of Jeremy Bentham whose fear of being exposed had abandoned the idea of publishing his essay, Paederasty. An even longer work by the same author was never published because of this same fear.

Some author actually erased the homosexual content from their texts as what Robert Burton did in his work Anatomy of Melancholy where same sex love examples and treatises were discussed using Latin while argument and contention of male-female eroticism was done in English. Some author also publicly denied their homosexuality just like Walt Whitman's disavowal of his true sexuality. Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, E. M.

Forester, D. H. Lawrence, Vita Sackville-West, Glenway Wescott and many more (both men and women) who had kept their identify in order that their work will find its way to the open and be accepted by the public; this could circumvent societal censure and condemnation and thus disgrace and public humiliation. The list of these writers is long and maybe, even endless. There are countless and nameless women and men authors / writers who opted to curtail any creative tendencies and works which might just give the public a sneak preview of what their true inclinations are. This practice is still being practiced even now in modern day England and anywhere in the world as well.

The most widespread areas of homosexuality suppression and censorship is in the part of establishments such as the government, commerce, tradition and conventions. Censorship in these sectors is even more pronounced and uncompromising. Some of this established segments of society even used force and brutality in the guise of maintaining public safety, interests and wellbeing. Incidents of confiscations, burnings and banning of materials and documents abound; some advocates even pull it up to the point of conviction and imprisonment.

As early as the 13 th century, there is already a recorded incident where the British government orders the burning of homosexual materials in its attempt to protect the sovereign right to a moral society of its citizenry. Many literary writers were convicted and prosecuted for obscenity and immoral writings. The government even promoted and advanced its homosexual policy by passing the Obscene Publication Act, a law against obscenity passed to suppress individual sexual preference and orientation. The victims of this law are not just the homosexual writers but also other authors who in one way or another believe and advocate homosexuality. Even booksellers are not freed and cannot evade this particular law; they are not exempted from prosecution.

In fact, there were two British booksellers who were convicted for selling the Earl of Rochester's Sodom: or The Quintessence of Debauchery in 1689. Confiscation of published works dubbed as obscene is also rampant as well as the banning of perceived homosexual materials from appearing in public (i. e. commercial circulation, private launching) even though these same materials are already published in other countries. Such is the case of Radcliffe Halls The Well of Censorship where it was the publisher who was brought to trail and despite words of support from several authors was convicted in England but the book was published and widely circulated in America.

The banning and confiscations encouraged and promoted by the British government was not lifted until the early part of the 19 th century. Because of the governments massive campaigns against the proliferation's of obscene (translated: homosexual) publications and writings, many book publishers voluntarily withdraw published materials from circulation as soon as they get a hint that the government do not want its presence in society. They also do this (sometimes even now) in response to reviews, promotions and protests made by sectors in the society even if these do not have any legal basis but is popular with the public. The censorship mandated by the law on obscene and undesirable writings / productions encompasses both homosexual and heterosexual materials but weighty and immense liability and onus is given to homosexual matters. This reality only point out the fact that society really does stigmatize same sex relationships.

Studies show that homosexual female gender publications are few if not nil in the early part of the literary history of not just England but also other countries as well. Not a lot of critics ever challenged this notion that all homosexuality in the early literary period was predominantly male. But it does not mean that homosexual preference is only limited and exclusive to the male members of society. The fact that woman authorship is not recognized until the early part of the 19 th century is the main reason for the seemingly absence of female homosexuality in British history of literature. Studying female homosexuality in literature is a seemingly hard task since researchers are having great difficulty looking for materials for this particular kind of inquiry since most publications are written by men. The need for recognition of women empowerment and the feminist agenda was foremost in the minds of the women writers so it was a sort of a choice between upholding female homosexuality and losing the small steps gained by the feminine movements or the oblique and implicit treatment of lesbianism and the progress of feminism.

The emergence of lesbian theme written by women are scarce and are few until the 19 th century when it becomes evident as women writers begun introducing the theme. Even if this is the case, there are still numerous occasions where advocates of female homosexuality observe and practice self censorship in order to survive and flourish. A lot of censorship's are still present but it seems that most of these are covert ones. The homosexual quest for understanding and acceptance is still far off in the horizons. Today, homosexual censorship comes in the inability of most people in the academe to honestly and openly discuss this topic.

The silencing is not palpable yet sometime even though it is vital to a certain literary work being presented in class, most teacher would rather keep silent about it. The three kinds of censorship's which curtail the free flow of homosexual themes in literature discussed are still prevalent in English society. And sometimes, the lesbian and gay writers with their publishers play a big and vital role in the censorship in their inability to come forward and face the risks of public censure. Works Cited Bad, Phil. Homosexuals and Homo Sapiens: A Formal Confusion.

The Dictionaries. n. d. your dictionary. com: the last word in words. August 3, 2007 < web >.

Crompton, Louis. Sexuality and Civilization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. "Censorship. " Literature. n. d.

glut, Inc. August 3, 2007 < web literature / censorship . html>. Dollimore, Jonathan.

Sex, Literature and Censorship. New York: Polity Press, 2001. Follett, Richard J. and Rank Larson. Bait/Retail: It Is Dishonest of English Teachers to Ignore the Homosexuality of Literary Figures Whose Works They Teach.

The English Journal, 71: 4, (1982), 18 - 21. Hatterer, Lawrence J. Changing Homosexuality in the Male: Treatment for Men Troubled By Homosexuality. North Ryde NSW: McGraw Hill, 1970.

National Lesbian and Gay Survey. Proust, Cole Porter, Michelangelo, Marc Almond and Me: Writings by Gay Men on Their Lives and Lifestyles. London; New York: Routledge, 1993. Waters, Sarah The Most Famous Fairy in History. " Journal of the History of Sexuality, 6: 2, (1995) 194 - 230.


Free research essays on topics related to: walt whitman, homo sapiens, men and women, 19 th century, lesbian and gay

Research essay sample on 19 Th Century Lesbian And Gay

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