Description:
An English translation of recorded depositions by men arrested for sodomy or pederasty in eighteenth-century Paris, exploring complex questions about sources, patterns, and meanings in the history of sexuality.
Brief description: Jeffrey Merrick is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His books include Sodomy in Eighteenth-Century France and Sodomites, Pederasts, and Tribades in Eighteenth-Century France, the latter also published by Penn State University Press.
Review Quotes:
"Merrick's sensitive reading of the sources and his sensible conclusions about the misplaced projection of identity onto men, both by police in the past and by historians in the present, is something scholars working in other geographic and temporal frames would do well to consider."
--Steven Maynard Eighteenth-Century Studies