As recently as the 1970s, gay and lesbian history was a relatively unexplored field
for serious scholars. The past quarter century, however, has seen enormous growth in gay and lesbian
studies. The literature is now voluminous; it is also widely scattered and not always easily
accessible. In Toward Stonewall, Nicholas Edsall provides a much-needed synthesis, drawing upon
both scholarly and popular writings to chart the development of homosexual subcultures in the modern
era and the uneasy place they have occupied in Western society. Edsall's
survey begins three hundred years ago in northwestern Europe, when homosexual subcultures
recognizably similar to those of our own era began to emerge, and it follows their surprisingly
diverse paths through the Enlightenment to the early nineteenth century. The book then turns to the
Victorian era, tracing the development of articulate and self-aware homosexual subcultures. With
a greater sense of identity and organization came new forms of resistance: this was the age that saw
the persecution of Oscar Wilde, among others, as well as the medical establishment's labeling
of homosexuality as a sign of degeneracy. The book's final section locates
the foundations of present-day gay sub-cultures in a succession of twentieth-century
scenes and events--in pre-Nazi Germany, in the lesbian world of interwar Paris, in the law
reforms of 1960s England--culminating in the emergence of popular movements in the postwar
United States.Rather than examining these groups in isolation, the book considers
them in their social contexts and as comparable to other subordinate groups and minority movements.
In the process, Toward Stonewall illuminates not only the subcultures that are its primary subject
but the larger societies from which they emerged.
Copyright:
2003
Book Details
Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9780813923963
Related ISBNs:
9780813925431
Publisher:
University of Virginia Press
Date of Addition:
05/07/13
Copyrighted By:
University of Virginia Press | Charlottesville & London
