Sex Before Sexuality

Sexuality in modern western culture is central to identity but thetendency to define by sexuality does not apply to the premodernpast. Before the 'invention' of sexuality, erotic acts and desireswere comprehended as species of sin, expressions of idealised love,courtship, and marriage, or components of intimacies between men orwomen, not as outworkings of an innermost self. With a focus on c.1100-c. 1800, this book explores the shifting meanings,languages, and practices of western sex. It is the first study tocombine the medieval and early modern to rethink this time of sexbefore sexuality, where same-sex and opposite-sex desire anderoticism bore but faint traces of what moderns came to callheterosexuality, homosexuality, lesbianism, and pornography.
This volume aims to contribute to contemporary historical theorythrough paying attention to the particularity of premodern sexualcultures. Phillips and Reay argue that students of premodern sexwill be blocked in their understanding if they use terms andconcepts applicable to sexuality since the late nineteenth century,and modern commentators will never know their subject without adeeper comprehension of sex's history.