Cultural Impact of Classical Greek Homoeroticism

The cultural impact of Classical Greek homoeroticism is a part of the history of sexuality. Later cultures have articulated their own discourse about homosexuality through the use of historic terms and concepts, such as "Greek love". The metaphor of "Greek love" becomes most vivid historically in periods when the reception of classical antiquity is an important influence on dominant aesthetic or intellectual movements.

'Greece' as the historical memory of a treasured past was romanticised and idealised as a time and a culture when love between men was not only tolerated but actually encouraged, and expressed as the high ideal of same-sex camaraderie. … If tolerance and approval of male homosexuality had happened once — and in a culture so much admired and imitated by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — might it not be possible to replicate in modernity the antique homeland of the non-heteronormative?

In his essay "Greek Love," Alastair Blanshard asserts that "Contrasting attitudes toward Greek love is one of the defining and divisive issues in the homosexual rights movement."

Read more about Cultural Impact Of Classical Greek Homoeroticism:  Historic Terms, Ancient Greek Background, Ancient Rome, Renaissance, Neoclassicism, English Romanticism, Victorian Era, 20th and 21st Centuries

Famous quotes containing the words cultural, impact, classical and/or greek:

    All cultural change reduces itself to a difference of categories. All revolutions, whether in the sciences or world history, occur merely because spirit has changed its categories in order to understand and examine what belongs to it, in order to possess and grasp itself in a truer, deeper, more intimate and unified manner.
    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

    The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.
    Pope John Paul II (b. 1920)

    Culture is a sham if it is only a sort of Gothic front put on an iron building—like Tower Bridge—or a classical front put on a steel frame—like the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. Culture, if it is to be a real thing and a holy thing, must be the product of what we actually do for a living—not something added, like sugar on a pill.
    Eric Gill (1882–1940)

    Mass ought to be in Latin, unless you cd. do it in Greek or Chinese. In fact, any abracadabra that no bloody member of the public or half-educated ape of a clargimint cd. think he understood.
    Ezra Pound (1885–1972)