Product Description
In this ground-breaking study of homosexuality, Edward Carpenter reviews an extensive body of literature, including accounts of Shamans and Bedarches (transgenders) in tribal society, and same-sex unions in ancient Greece and feudal Japan. This book includes much that has a direct bearing on issues of gay spirituality, including a discussion of the Kedushim, the priests of the ancient Near Eastern Goddess religion, and target of the Levitical anti-sodomy and anti-cross-dressing regulations. There is also a mention of the sanctioned Christian male same-sex unions in the Balkans, which gives a new dimension to recent controversies. The chapter on same-sex unions in feudal Japan is also of particular interest, as it deals with a topic very rarely dealt with by western writers.--J.B. Hare
About the Author
About the Author:
"Edward Carpenter was an English socialist poet, anthologist, early homosexual activist, and socialist philosopher.
A leading figure in late 19th- and early 20th-century Britain, he was instrumental in the foundation of the Fabian Society and the Labour Party. A poet and writer, he was a close friend of Walt Whitman and Rabindranath Tagore, corresponding with many famous figures such as Annie Besant, Isadora Duncan, Havelock Ellis, Roger Fry, Mahatma Gandhi, James Keir Hardie, J K Kinney, Jack London, George Merrill, E D Morel, William Morris, E R Pease, John Ruskin, and Olive Schreiner.
As a philosopher he is particularly known for his publication of Civilisation, its Cause and Cure in which he proposes that civilisation is a form of disease that human societies pass through. Civilisations, he says, rarely last more than a thousand years before collapsing, and no society has ever passed through civilisation successfully. His 'cure' is a closer association with the land and greater development of our inner nature. Although derived from his experience of Hindu mysticism, and referred to as 'mystical socialism', his thoughts parallel those of several writers in the field of psychology and sociology at the start of the twentieth century, such as Boris Sidis, Sigmund Freud, and Wilfred Trotter who all recognised that society puts ever increasing pressure on the individual that can result in mental and physical illnesses such as neurosis, and the particular nervousness which was then described as neurasthenia.
A strong advocate of sexual freedom, living in a gay community near Sheffield, he had a profound influence on both D H Lawrence and E M Forster.
He was also the first person to introduce the wearing of sandals into Britain." (Quote from wikipedia.org)
"Edward Carpenter was an English socialist poet, anthologist, early homosexual activist, and socialist philosopher.
A leading figure in late 19th- and early 20th-century Britain, he was instrumental in the foundation of the Fabian Society and the Labour Party. A poet and writer, he was a close friend of Walt Whitman and Rabindranath Tagore, corresponding with many famous figures such as Annie Besant, Isadora Duncan, Havelock Ellis, Roger Fry, Mahatma Gandhi, James Keir Hardie, J K Kinney, Jack London, George Merrill, E D Morel, William Morris, E R Pease, John Ruskin, and Olive Schreiner.
As a philosopher he is particularly known for his publication of Civilisation, its Cause and Cure in which he proposes that civilisation is a form of disease that human societies pass through. Civilisations, he says, rarely last more than a thousand years before collapsing, and no society has ever passed through civilisation successfully. His 'cure' is a closer association with the land and greater development of our inner nature. Although derived from his experience of Hindu mysticism, and referred to as 'mystical socialism', his thoughts parallel those of several writers in the field of psychology and sociology at the start of the twentieth century, such as Boris Sidis, Sigmund Freud, and Wilfred Trotter who all recognised that society puts ever increasing pressure on the individual that can result in mental and physical illnesses such as neurosis, and the particular nervousness which was then described as neurasthenia.
A strong advocate of sexual freedom, living in a gay community near Sheffield, he had a profound influence on both D H Lawrence and E M Forster.
He was also the first person to introduce the wearing of sandals into Britain." (Quote from wikipedia.org)
