Book ID: CBB001213645

Nothing Natural Is Shameful: Sodomy and Science in Late Medieval Europe (2013)

unapi

Cadden, Joan (Author)


University of Pennsylvania Press


Publication Date: 2013
Physical Details: 327 pp.; ill.; bibl.; index
Language: English

"In his Problemata, Aristotle provided medieval thinkers with the occasion to inquire into the natural causes of the sexual desires of men to act upon or be acted upon by other men, thus bringing human sexuality into the purview of natural philosophers, whose aim it was to explain the causes of objects and events in nature. With this philosophical justification, some late medieval intellectuals asked whether such dispositions might arise from anatomy or from the psychological processes of habit formation. As the fourteenth-century philosopher Walter Burley observed, "Nothing natural is shameful." The authors, scribes, and readers willing to "contemplate base things" never argued that they were not vile, but most did share the conviction that they could be explained. From the evidence that has survived in manuscripts of and related to the Problemata, two narratives emerge: a chronicle of the earnest attempts of medieval medical theorists and natural philosophers to understand the cause of homosexual desires and pleasures in terms of natural processes, and an ongoing debate as to whether the sciences were equipped or permitted to deal with such subjects at all. Mining hundreds of texts and deciphering commentaries, indices, abbreviations, and marginalia, Joan Cadden shows how European scholars deployed a standard set of philosophical tools and a variety of rhetorical strategies to produce scientific approaches to sodomy." -- Publisher website.

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Reviewed By

Review Elliott, Dyan (2014) Review of "Nothing Natural Is Shameful: Sodomy and Science in Late Medieval Europe". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 749-750). unapi

Review Mills, Robert (2014) Review of "Nothing Natural Is Shameful: Sodomy and Science in Late Medieval Europe". American Historical Review (pp. 1760-1761). unapi

Review Elliott, Dyan (2014) Review of "Nothing Natural Is Shameful: Sodomy and Science in Late Medieval Europe". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 749-750). unapi

Review Salmón, Fernando (2014) Review of "Nothing Natural Is Shameful: Sodomy and Science in Late Medieval Europe". Dynamis: Acta Hispanica ad Medicinae Scientiarumque Historiam Illustrandam (pp. 493-495). unapi

Review Puff, Helmut (2015) Review of "Nothing Natural Is Shameful: Sodomy and Science in Late Medieval Europe". Social History of Medicine (pp. 195-196). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001213645/

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Authors & Contributors
McLaren, Angus
Grassi, Umberto
Rostagno, Antonio
Lauriello, Giuseppe
Crawford, Tony
Giglioni, Guido
Concepts
Sex
Sexuality
Psychology
Sexual behavior
Emotions; passions
Biology
Time Periods
Medieval
20th century, early
Early modern
Ancient
19th century
20th century
Places
United States
Europe
Italy
South Asia
Uganda
England
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