Torquato Tasso composed a poem on Ganymede and Jupiter, but self-censored it because of its underlying theme: homoeroticism.
Early Modern
An Interview with Historian Rictor Norton
NOTCHES caught up with historian Rictor Norton to discuss his views on interpreting historical homosexuality and the future of LGBTQ studies.
The Queer Case of Catherine/Giovanni Vizzani
What does the case of Catherine/Giovanni Vizzani reveal about gender identity and sexual desire in the Eighteenth Century?
The Shapes of Fancy: Reading for Queer Desire in Early Modern Literature
The Shapes of Fancy stages an impassioned defense of the inherently desirous nature of reading.
The Beauty and the Terror
The Italian Renaissance was far stranger and darker than many of us realise, and that sex and sexuality played an important role in this unsavoury side of the sixteenth century.
Three’s a Crowd?: Navigating a Love Triangle in Enlightenment France
How an Enlightenment philosopher understood the love between his mistress and her sister
‘She rose in the Morning of a contrary Sex’: Stories from Early Modern Wonder Books
Early modern wonder books included stories of people who changed sex as a surprising natural phenomenon.