Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West (review)

Reviews 283 the expectations of the readership shaped the literary qualities and content of the correspondence is perhaps given less weight than it deserves. But it is still a milestone in the analysis of Byzantine letter-writing. The work gives a useful overview of ByzantineBulgarian history and the administrative complexities of the Bulgarian region, but its main strength is in the novel approach to Byzantine epistolography, in the attempt to demonstrate that far from being vacuous and unintelligible literary exercises, Theophylact's letters (like those of so m a n y Byzantine writers) performed a very specific, practical and effective role in the author's fulfillment of his ecclesiastical duties and the maintenance of a sophisticated and complex network of political and intellectual contacts. Lynda Garland School of Classics and History University ofNew England Murray, Jacqueline and Konrad Eisenbichler, ed., Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West, Toronto/Buffalo London, University of Toronto Press, 1996; pp. 315; R.R.P. US$60.00, -£44.50 (cloth), US$21.95, £15.95 (paper). This collection of essays issued out of the conference 'Sex and Sexuality in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance', held in 1991 at the University of Toronto. Eclectic in disciplinary orientations and methodological approaches as such productions often are, these essays are nonetheless generally characterised by a concern to take issues of sexual discipline, identity, desire arid experience as the subject of inquiry. A lucid Introduction by Jacqueline Murray and Vern L. Bullough's more personal reflections in 'Sex in History: 284 Reviews a Redux' locate the subsequent articles within a clearly drawn field. In particular, the Introduction offers a neat review of historiography and epistemology and Murray's footnotes are well worth perusing for their directions to other literature and additional musings on current debates. Bullough's anecdotal comments on potential sources and possible approaches may have lost something in the transition from spoken to written form, but his recollections as a researcher on sexual topics before sexuality was 'respectable' allows an insight into the experiences of a senior scholar which is unusual and refreshing. The essays are arranged in thematic groupings, the first focussing on legal norms and moral codes. In this cluster, James Brundage provides a useful overview of the development of legal machinery to enforce sexual discipline, offering a broad framework in which to locate the growing number of studies of local and provincial courts. Shifting the perspective from the European to the regional, Roberto J. Gonzalez-Casanovas establishes the ideological centrality of sexual control to the maintenance of social and political order in thirteenth-century Castile. For those unable to access the literature dealing with medieval Spain, this close reading of Alfonso X's legal code Siete partidas, is very welcome and includes a valuable appendix of passages from the source with English translations. Also drawing on fascinating material, Ivana Elb ventures into the Portuguese settlements of West Africa to trace the tensions between legal prescription and social reality in fifteenth and sixteenth-century sexual arrangements. Turning to sixteenth-century London, Carol Kazmierczak Manzione proposes that civic governors of institutions such as Bridewell adopted 'moral policing' as a preventative strategy against poverty, and hence the need to supply poor relief. Essays exploring gendered sexualities and desires stand at Reviews 285 the centre of this collection. The nature of premodern understandings of sexuality, and particularly male same-sex desire, are central to the articles by Robert Shephard, Joseph Cady and Guy Poirier. Working from the perspective of sexuality as a discursive formation, Shepherd's comparison of rumours concerning the sexual reputations of Elizabeth I and James I argues that the paucity of gossip (in contemporary sources) directed at the latter demonstrates that his friendships with males were not generally regarded as sexual relationships. In direct contrast to Shephard's conclusions, Cady ruthlessly pursues the thesis that a recognition of homosexuality, as an identity or sexual orientation, can be identified in the late-sixteenth century Memoires-Journaux of Pierre de l'Estoile, an official at the court of Henri III. In the third article in this cluster, Poirier's exploration of orientalising stereotypes in Renaissance French travel literature makes no explicit claims...