Children and Sexuality
From the Greeks to the Great War
Edited by
George Rousseau

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‘Children and Sexuality is a courageous and timely book. The authors,
who include historians, anthropologists and psychoanalysts, dare to
confront one of the most difficult social problems of our time and to
view it from a historical and a comparative perspective.’ – Peter Burke,
Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, UK
‘At a time when the combined forces of sophisticated technologies
and unfettered capitalism objectify children in myriad ways, Children
and Sexuality takes a fascinating and in-depth look at their sexuality as
perceived by adults throughout history, raising important questions
about innocence, eroticism, commodification and societal mores. An
intriguing, thought-provoking book.’ – Susan Linn, Harvard University
and author of Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood
‘Starting with a controversial piece on ancient Athens and ending with
a very fine nuanced account of contemporary Thailand, this absorbing
collection then makes its way through Reformation Geneva and
modern England, treating a startling subject with historical care,
building in its own critical responses.’ – Randolph Trumbach, Bernard
Baruch College, City University of New York and author of Sex and the
Gender Revolution
‘This is a book for the thoughtful person with vision that is both broad
and deep. Merely take one look at the chapter headings and you will
not be able to put it down.’ – John T. Truman, Columbia University,
USA
‘Children and Sexuality is a bracing reminder that the young were
eroticized long before paedophiles discovered the Internet. A haunting,
meticulous and provocative book that places the modern anxiety
about lost innocence in historical context and raises thorny questions
about adult–child relations in every era.’ – Carl Honoré, author of In
Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed
and Under Pressure: How The Epidemic of Hyper-Parenting is Endangering
Childhood
‘Anthropologists and other social scientists researching childhood will
undoubtedly find in this volume extraordinary insights on the history
of child–adult relations that will greatly enrich their own thinking.’ –
Jocelyn Boyden, University of Oxford, UK
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Also by George Rousseau:
THIS LONG DISEASE MY LIFE: Alexander Pope and the Sciences (With Marjorie
Hope Nicolson)
ENGLISH POETIC SATIRE (With N. Rudenstine)
THE AUGUSTAN MILIEU: Essays Presented to Louis A. Landa (Edited with
Eric Rothstein)
TOBIAS SMOLLETT: Bicentennial Essays Presented to Lewis M. Knapp (Edited
with P. G. Boucé)
ORGANIC FORM: The Life of an Idea (Edited )
GOLDSMITH: The Critical Heritage
THE FERMENT OF KNOWLEDGE: Studies in the Historiography of Science (with
Roy Porter)
THE LETTERS AND PRIVATE PAPERS OF SIR JOHN HILL
TOBIAS SMOLLETT: Essays of Two Decades
SCIENCE AND THE IMAGINATION: The Berkeley Conference (Edited )
SEXUAL UNDERWORLDS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT (with Roy Porter)
THE ENDURING LEGACY: Alexander Pope Tercentenary Essays (with Pat Rogers)
EXOTICISM IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT (with Roy Porter)
THE LANGUAGES OF PSYCHE: Mind and Body in Enlightenment Thought
PERILOUS ENLIGHTENMENT: Pre- and Post-Modern Discourses–Sexual,
Historical
ENLIGHTENMENT CROSSINGS: Pre- and Post-Modern Discourses–
Anthropological
ENLIGHTENMENT BORDERS: Pre- and Post-Modern Discourses–Medical,
Scientific Medicine and the Muses
HYSTERIA BEFORE FREUD (with Elaine Showalter, Sander Gilman, Roy Porter, and
Helen King)
GOUT: The Patrician Malady (with Roy Porter)
FRAMING AND IMAGINING DISEASE IN CULTURAL HISTORY (with Miranda
Gill, David Haycock and Malte Herwig)
MARGUERITE YOURCENAR: A Biography
NERVOUS ACTS: Essays on Literature, Culture and Sensibility
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Children and Sexuality
From the Greeks to the Great War
Edited by
George Rousseau
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Editorial matter, selection, introduction, chapters 5 and 6
© George S. Rousseau 2007.
All remaining chapters © their respective authors 2007.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified
as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2007 by
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‘We shall not always give out a sound like a beaten gong as one
sensation strikes and then another. Children, our lives have
been gongs striking; clamour boasting; cries of despair; blows
on the nape of the neck in gardens.’
(Virginia Woolf, The Waves, London, The Hogarth Press,
1931, pp. 41–2)
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Contents
List of Illustrations
ix
Preface
xii
Notes on the Contributors
xvi
1. Introduction
1
George Rousseau
Part I
The Ancient and Early Modern World
2. Juvenile Crime, Aggression and Abuse in Fifth-century
Athens: a Case Study
41
Michael Vickers and Daphne Nash Briggs
Responses by Josephine Crawley Quinn and Alfonso Moreno
3. Incest between Adults and Children in the Medieval World
85
Elizabeth Archibald
Response by Elisabeth Dutton
4. ‘Under-Age’ Sexual Activity in Reformation Geneva
108
William G. Naphy
Responses by Tom Betteridge and Nick Davidson
5. Privilege, Power and Sexual Abuse in Georgian Oxford
142
George Rousseau
Response by Tim Hitchcock
Part II
Victorians and Edwardians
6. ‘You Have Made me Tear the Veil From Those Most
Secret Feelings’: John Addington Symonds Amidst
the Children
173
George Rousseau
Response by Katherine D. Watson
vii
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viii
Contents
7.
Platonic Dons, Adolescent Bodies: Benjamin Jowett, John
Addington Symonds, Walter Pater
206
Stefano Evangelista
Response by Richard Dellamora
8.
The Nineteenth-Century Photographic Likeness and the
Body of the Child
237
Lindsay Smith
Response by Lawrence Gasquet
9.
Victorian Girlhood: Eroticizing the Maternal,
Maternalizing the Erotic: Same-Sex Relations between
Girls, c. 1880–1920
268
Alison Hennegan
Response by Josephine McDonagh
10.
At Once A-sexual and Anal: Baden-Powell and the Boy
Scouts
299
Elleke Boehmer
Response by Mark Harrison
Part III
The Anthropological View
11. Child Sexual Abuse – an Anthropological Perspective
319
Heather Montgomery
Index
348
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List of Illustrations
1.1
‘Viola Hamilton, posing naked in a classical attitude as
Flora against a square column in a photographic studio,
circa 1898–1908’. Reproduced by kind permission of The
Wellcome Library, London.
7
2.1
An Attic red-figure cup, fifth century BC, showing naked
slave boys preparing to serve wine. Reproduced by kind
permission of the Ashmolean Museum, University of
Oxford. Ashmolean AN G. 276.
43
2.2
An Attic red-figure cup, fifth century BC, showing boy
with a plate of food and bowling a hoop. Reproduced by
kind permission of the Ashmolean Museum, University of
Oxford. Ashmolean AN G. 276.
45
2.3
An Attic red-figure cup, fifth century BC, showing
a paedophile and his victim. Reproduced by kind
permission of the Ashmolean Museum, University of
Oxford. Ashmolean AN G. 276.
47
2.4
Socrates seeking Alcibiades in the House of Aspasia by
Jean Léon Gérôme (1861)
52
6.1
Print from G. Lewis from a painting by Auguste Pugin of
the interior of Magdalen College Chapel, facing west,
published in Ackermann’s History of Oxford (1814).
Reproduced by kind permission of the President and
Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford.
178
6.2
Group photograph of members of the choir of Magdalen
College taken by Rufus Stone in the New Forest during a
tour of Hampshire made by them in 1863. Goolden is
sitting in the front row on the far right. Magdalen College
MS Catalogue 408. Reproduced by kind permission
of the President and Fellows of Magdalen College,
Oxford.
180
ix
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Document Outline

• Cover
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Notes on the Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• Part I: The Ancient and Early Modern World
  • 2 Juvenile Crime, Aggression and Abuse in Fifth-century Athens: a Case Study
  • 3 Incest between Adults and Children in the Medieval World
  • 4 'Under-Age' Sexual Activity in Reformation Geneva
  • 5 Privilege, Power and Sexual Abuse in Georgian Oxford
• Part II: Victorians and Edwardians
  • 6 'You Have Made me Tear the Veil From Those Most Secret Feelings': John Addington Symonds Amidst the Children
  • 7 Platonic Dons, Adolescent Bodies: Benjamin Jowett, John Addington Symonds, Walter Pater
  • 8 The Nineteenth-Century Photographic Likeness and the Body of the Child
  • 9 Victorian Girlhood: Eroticizing the Maternal, Maternalizing the Erotic: Same-Sex Relations between Girls, c. 18801920
  • 10 At Once A-sexual and Anal: Baden-Powell and the Boy Scouts
• Part III: The Anthropological View
  • 11 Child Sexual Abuse Ņ an Anthropological Perspective
• Index
  • A
  • B
  • C
  • D
  • E
  • F
  • G
  • H
  • I
  • J
  • K
  • L
  • M
  • N
  • O
  • P
  • Q
  • R
  • S
  • T
  • U
  • V
  • W
  • X
  • Y
  • Z

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