Love is a Cunning Weaver: Myths, Sexuality, and the Modern World (original) (raw)

Lovers' Legends: The Gay Greek Myths

2002

[For recent work, such as the myths of Archias and Actaeon, Leucocomas and Euxynthetus, Meletus and Timagoras, and Nissus and Euryalus, please see my Academia page, https://independent.academia.edu/AndrewCalimach ] The Greek myths of love between gods or heroes and youths, including Zeus and Ganymede, Poseidon and Pelops, Laius and Chrysippus, Apollo and Hyacinth, Hercules and Hylas, Achilles and Patroclus, Narcissus, and Orpheus. The myths are restored and retold from ancient fragments. Each story has a complete bibliography, and from the many illustrations of Greek vase paintings and sculptures we see how the Greeks imagined these characters and these situations. 希腊神话中的神和男孩，还是英雄和男孩，包括宙斯和木卫三，海神和贝洛布思，拉伊俄斯和克吕西波，阿波罗和风信子，大力士和海拉斯，阿喀琉斯和帕特罗克洛斯，水仙，奥菲斯之间的同性之爱。

A STUDY OF HOMOSEXUALITY IN ANCIENT GREECE WITH REFERENCE TO MADELINE MILLER'S THE SONG OF ACHILLES

Homosexuality has been a taboo in several parts of the world and continues to be so despite the vast changes that have revolutionized the lives of LGBTQIA+ community. But the question is, was it always a taboo? Were the classical societies ignorant of homosexuality? Or were they so accepting of it? Did they recognize and classify different sexual orientations? What was love between two individuals of the same gender like? This paper attempts to explore the nuances of homosexuality in ancient Greece with reference to Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles. With the theoretical framework of Foucault's theory of sexuality, it aims to dissect the factors of homosexuality in ancient Greece, their ways of perceiving it, along with the character analysis of the protagonists in terms of masculinity and femininity. Understanding the notions of the fluid nature of gender and sexuality through retellings of classics like The Song of Achilles diversifies the readers' relationship to literatures in being sensitive to queer community today.

Sexual Uses of Myth as the Basis for a Male-Dominated Society

2015

In world history, few societies have distinguished themselves as the ancient Greeks did. This great society was the birthplace of democracy, the site of the first Olympics and the home to many of the world’s great minds. When thinking of ancient Greece, one sees the Parthenon, Themistocles’ triremes and even men dressed in their chitons passionately debating in the Pynx; however, certain images seem to be obscured from our memory, though they once formed the basis for a male-dominated society. These images revolve around sexuality. One does not always associate ancient Athens with sophisticated sculptures featuring exaggerated use of hermai, nor does one think of red-figure vases showing images of female self-gratification. In more recent scholarly works, ancient Greek sexuality has come to be associated with not just male-female sexual relations, but also with politics and the everyday lifestyle of Greeks; therefore, this paper will discuss sexuality’s importance in the formation o...

THE HERO AND THE ROGUE Man and Boy Love Ethics in Greek Myth and the Modern Imagination

E.R.O.S., 2014

NOTA BENE: References herein are to relations between males above the age of consent in their respective jurisdictions. No reference is made or intended to illegal activities with individuals below the age of eighteen (18). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (An early version of this article, “THE HERO AND THE ROGUE Faces of Male Love in Greek Myth and Modern Imagination,” was published in the 2014 edition of E.R.O.S. quarterly) The myths of the Greeks illuminate the present with surprising insights, at times uncomfortably modern. Choose - the myths seem to invite - choose to live as brave and just men, or to be banal and rapacious. This tension between the hero and the rogue is one the Greeks played out on the field of battle between nation and nation, man and man, in the passionate encounter between a man and a woman, and between a man and a boy. That is a battle too, the myths seem to say, a battle not with the other but with oneself, whether in a palace three millennia ago, or on the streets and in the schools of today.

Reading Greco-Roman Gender Ideals in Byzantium: Classical Heroes and Eastern Roman Gender

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK ON IDENTITY IN BYZANTIUM, 2022

Allusions to ancient and biblical models play key roles in the articulation and enforcement of gender norms in medieval eastern Roman society. This essay explores how ancient figures could be used as normative models for ethical practices that differed significantly from those of their own society, focusing on the example of the fourth-century BCE Spartan king Agesilaus, a polytheist whose sexual attraction to young men was acceptable and open within his society, and who appears in the early twelfth-century CE history by George Kedrenos as a model of celibacy. He is remembered for having the strength of character to turn down a kiss from a boy and upheld as an example of the virtue of chastity. Tracing this one story helps us see the mechanics of cultural transmission that moved Agesilaus’s story across 17 centuries, and how gradual changes in ethical systems allowed George Kedrenos and his audience to perceive Agesilaus’ ethics as consonant with their own. Classical Greek figures served as examples of ethical behavior because, rather than standing as an example of foreignness, Xenophon’s story affirmed the central tenants of twelfth-century ethics.

FEMALE HOMOSEXUALITY IN ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME

Routledge, 2021

This groundbreaking study, among the earliest syntheses on female homosexuality throughout Antiquity, explores the topic with careful reference to ancient concepts and views, drawing fully on the existing visual and written record including literary, philosophical, and scienti c documents. Even today, ancient female homosexuals are still too often seen in terms of a mythical, ethereal Sapphic love, or stereotyped as "Amazons" or courtesans. Boehringer's scholarly book replaces these clichés with rigorous, precise analysis of iconography and texts by Sappho, Plato, Ovid, Juvenal, and many other lyric poets, satirists, and astrological writers, in search of the prevailing norms, constraints, and possibilities for erotic desire. The portrait emerges of an ancient society to which today's sexual categories do not apply-a society "before sexuality"-where female homosexuality looks very di erent, but is nonetheless very real. Now available in English for the rst time, Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome includes a preface by David Halperin. This book will be of value to students and scholars of ancient sexuality and gender, and to anyone interested in histories and theories of sexuality.

Real Men Don't Wear Dresses: Heroes and Masculinity in Ancient Greek and Roman Myth

In his short, tongue-in-cheek book, Real Men Don't Eat Quiche, Bruce Feirstein in 1982 "jokingly enumerated the method in the madness of proving masculinity" (Kimmel 295). In response to a decade of the highly visible and controversial feminist movement of the 1970s, many men in the United States reacted in a way that one might call an identity crises. What did it mean, now, to be a man or to display masculine traits? The appearance of the "New Male" in the form of a man more sensitive to Women's issues and his partner's needs and desires arrived in the form of cultural figures like Phil Donahue and Alan Alda. To presumably recapture a lost type of masculinity, Feirstein's satirical advice then was to "follow the prescriptions of Flex Crush, a 225-pound truck driver, who, between hauling loads of nuclear waste, paused to define the meaning of manhood" (Kimmel 295). Similarly, students and scholars of ancient