Foucault's Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality

The W. B. Stanford Memorial Lectures

by Simon Goldhill

This is a study of how sex and sexuality were written about in the first centuries of this era, a central period in the history of sexuality. Writing with the same wit and verve as the ancient writers he engages with, Simon Goldhill shows how the standard accounts of sexuality in this period are distorted by ignoring the sexy, ironic and often bizarre texts of the ancient novel, erotic poetry and humorous dialogues.

Genres: History, Philosophy, Sexuality, Nonfiction, Classical Studies, Gender and Sexuality

212 pages, Paperback

First published January 26, 1995

About the author

Simon David Goldhil is Professor in Greek literature and culture and fellow and Director of Studies in Classics at King's College, Cambridge. He was previously Director of Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge, succeeding Mary Jacobus in October 2011. He is best known for his work on Greek tragedy.
In 2009, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2010, he was appointed as the John Harvard Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences at Cambridge, a research position held concurrently with his chair in Greek.
In 2016, he became a fellow of the British Academy. He is a member of the Council of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Board of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes, and is President of the European Institutes for Advanced Study (NetIAS).
Goldhill is a well-known lecturer and broadcaster and has appeared on television and radio in England, Australia, the United States and Canada. His books have been translated into ten languages, and he has been profiled by newspapers in Brazil, Australia and the Netherlands.

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Appearances notwithstanding, Foucault's Virginity is not so much about Foucault as it is a series of three linked essays on a portion of the subject matter of his book The History of Sexuality, namely, representative erotic narratives of the Second Sophistic (c. 50-250). Appearances do, however, sell books. Here the title catches the attention while the cover's Renaissance drawing of the smiling, busty prostitute, whip raised, side-saddled upon grey-bearded Aristotle clinches the deal--a fair one because, in this case, appearances do not deceive.

As Eva Canterella has observed in her own studies of ancient sexuality, virtually all documents of the period narrate male desire, whether for women or other men. But while women are off-stage in the more philosophical treatments, just as they were in the classical drama, they are represented as central characters, even protagonists, in the erotic comedies discussed by Goldhill. In substantial part, the critique of Foucault is a criticism of inattention. The comedies of the transitional period between paganism and Christianity have been neglected, their spicier sections mistranslated, if translated at all. Everyone reads--or reads of--the Peripatetics, the Academicians, Stoics and Epicureans. Few are exposed to this popular material.
Goldhill focusses on four texts: Longus' Daphnis and Chloe; Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Cleitophon; Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe and the romance of Bacchon and Ismenadora inspiring Plutarch's dialogue Amatorius, the text most involving Foucault. Heliodorus' Aethiopica, Apuleius' Golden Ass and a host of other sources, fictional and philosophical, are discussed glancingly.

As slaves confound their masters in the New Comedy, so women are represented as confounding men in the Second Sophistic. So love confounds us all, then as now. While the traditional problematics of eroticism, marriage and gender are, with few exceptions, rather quaint, if not offensive, to we moderns, ancient erotic fiction, thanks to the allowances afforded comedy, can still entertain. This erudite book is, given its self-conscious appreciation of its subject matter, a pleasure to read and an enticement to a neglected literature.

[Shuchi]

Post-dated review just so that I don't forget:

This was an interesting scholarly book that paints different views of sexuality during antiquity, and how those informed perceptions of virginity. This includes discussions about how bisexuality was a useful identity for men, from the point of view of establishing virginity, and also for managing interpersonal power. Then, Goldhill also goes into depth about the first YA romance novel, Daphnis and Chloe, in which siblings separated at birth fall in love with each other but have to very gradually figure out how to be intimate by slowly using animals as references. Then, some other examples as well.

To me, the book didn't feel as directly Foucaltian, and/or at least seemed to operate outside the language I see used with Foucalt in recent times. At times it had a lot of hat tipping moments to other academics that weren't legible for me, but was quite readable even all that aside.