Abstract
This paper interrogates the representations of same-sex male sexuality in Vicente Suárez Casañ’s La Pederastia (1892), a curious blend of pseudo sexology treatise, historiographical study, and socio-moral commentary, what Pura Fernández refers to as a “género intermedio” positioned between the informative essay and fictional accounts of clinical cases. The Catalan author published the book as part of his four-volume work, Conocimientos para la vida privada. The tomes in this series cover such issues as sexual hygiene, venereal diseases, prostitution, and homosexuality. La Pederastia configures the male homosexual for a wide-reading public, declaring that the “pederasta” is different from the sodomite, in his view an outdated, ambiguous term, and should be distinguished from the “bujarrón” and the “maricón,” colloquial, popular expressions to refer to non-normative men in nineteenth-century Spain, because they do not fully describe the “pederasta” and fail to signify his dangerous and corruptive influence on society. To date, there is no significant literary study examining this topic in the author’s corpus, hence this paper hopes to fill that void regarding one of the most pressing themes of the late nineteenth century. In arguing that the “pederasta” is at once a madman and a lusty libertine, Suárez Casañ splices age-old concepts regarding sin with new-fangled notions revolving around innate instinct in order to create a new, monstrous sexual construct in the Spanish collective imaginary.
Presenters
Mehl PenroseAssociate Professor of Spanish & Director of Graduate Studies, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, University of Maryland, Maryland, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
HOMOSEXUALITY, PEDERASTA, PSEUDO SEXOLOGY, SEXUAL INVERSION
