Difference between revisions of "Wilson Collection: John Addington Symonds"

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(John Addington Symonds)
 
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''(Frontis portrait of John Addington Symonds from volume one (of a two volume set) of John Addington Symonds: A Biography: Compiled from His Papers and Correspondence by Horatio F. Brown; London: John C. Nimmo, 1895)''
 
''(Frontis portrait of John Addington Symonds from volume one (of a two volume set) of John Addington Symonds: A Biography: Compiled from His Papers and Correspondence by Horatio F. Brown; London: John C. Nimmo, 1895)''
 
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'''John Addington Symonds'''  
 
'''John Addington Symonds'''  
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==''To return to "Exhibit contents" links, click:''==
 
==[[Rich Wilson: Aspects of Queer Existence in 19th-Century America]]==
 
==[[Rich Wilson: Aspects of Queer Existence in 19th-Century America]]==
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==''See also:''==
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==[[John Addington Symonds and Walt Whitman, 1865-1892]]==
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==[[Whitman, Symonds, Carpenter: "In paths untrodden," 1859-1924]]==
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==[[Jonathan Ned Katz: Resistance: 1859-1972]]==
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==[[John Addington Symonds, Edward Carpenter, and Walt Whitman: 1892-1893]]==

Latest revision as of 11:02, 26 November 2012

Symondsfrontisportrait.jpg

(Frontis portrait of John Addington Symonds from volume one (of a two volume set) of John Addington Symonds: A Biography: Compiled from His Papers and Correspondence by Horatio F. Brown; London: John C. Nimmo, 1895)

John Addington Symonds

For nineteen years John Addington Symonds unsuccessfully pressed Walt Whitman to give an explicit definition of “the dear love comrades.”[1]

The Englishman authored A Problem in Greek Ethics (published 1883), an important early defense of homosexuality.[2] In A Problem in Modern Ethics (1891) he urged homosexual law reform and used the phrase “homosexual instincts.”[3] It was the first English-language in-print use of the word “homosexual.”[4]

Symonds was an esteemed scholar of Renaissance Italy. He revealed that Michelangelo's grand-nephew feminized the pronouns in the painter's love poems. The censorship occurred because, according to the grand nephew's margin-note, the verses originally expressed “amor...virile” (masculine love).[5]

References

  1. Jonathan Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976), 341, 351.
  2. Katz, 343.
  3. Vanessa Baird, The No-Nonsense Guide to Sexual Diversity (Oxford: New Internationalist Publications, Ltd. 2007), 26, accessed October 19, 2012, http://books.google.com/books?id=jJr8Yt54TeAC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=%22homosexual+instincts%22+problem+in+modern+ethics&source=bl&ots=gBENA8VsJE&sig=-PvV3zO3SX-8ae8lx1JKNXu-p6Y&hl=en&sa=X&ei=el7vT7muFuqS6wHgyqSfBg&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=instincts&f=false.
  4. Baird, 26.
  5. Rictor Norton, The Myth of the Modern Homosexual: Queer History and the Search for Cultural Unity (Washington: Cassell, 1997), 143.


To return to "Exhibit contents" links, click:

Rich Wilson: Aspects of Queer Existence in 19th-Century America

See also:

John Addington Symonds and Walt Whitman, 1865-1892

Whitman, Symonds, Carpenter: "In paths untrodden," 1859-1924

Jonathan Ned Katz: Resistance: 1859-1972

John Addington Symonds, Edward Carpenter, and Walt Whitman: 1892-1893