Lecture Noel Malcolm: Early Modern Europe and the Origins of Modern Homosexuality

For this year’s annual lecture, the Utrecht University Centre for Early Modern Studies invited Noel Malcolm (University of Oxford). In ‘Early Modern Europe and the Origins of Modern Homosexuality’ he will offer a new approach to the European history of homosexuality.

A new approach

Modern scholarship on the history of homosexuality has identified two very different patterns of male-male sexual relations in early modern Europe. Before 1700, it is argued, such behaviour was essentially different from modern homosexuality: it involved men having sex only with teenaged boys (not other men), and it implied nothing about a distinctive sexual orientation or identity, being purely ‘acts-based’. But around 1700, it is also claimed, something much closer to modern homosexuality emerged quite suddenly in England, France, and the Netherlands. This did involve a sense of identity, as well as a special subculture. Why such a major change should have occurred so rapidly has never been explained. In this lecture, Noel Malcolm will offer a new approach to the whole issue, making it possible to give, for the first time, a coherent account of all the evidence.