Uranian (from
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
) is a historical term for
homosexual men
Gay men are male homosexuals. Some bisexual men, bisexual and homoromantic men may also dually identify as gay, and a number of young gay men also identify as queer. Historically, gay men have been referred to by a number of different terms, ...
. The word was also used as an adjective in association with male homosexuality or inter-male attraction regardless of
sexual orientation
Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender. These attractions are generall ...
.
An early use of the term appears in
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friends ...
's 'Sixth Letter' in the ''
Aesthetic Education of Man'' (1795–96). Schiller claims that state institutions are so jealous they would rather share their servants with a
Cytherean
Cytherean is an adjective literally meaning ''of Cythera'' (Latin ''Cytherēa'', from the Greek adjective Κυθέρεια ''Kythereia'', from Κύθηρα ''Kythēra'' 'Cythera'). Cythera is a small Greek island, southeast of the Peloponnesu ...
Venus than a Uranian Venus.
[Friedrich Schiller. 'Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.' In Harrison, Wood and Gaiger eds. ''Art in Theory 1648-1815: An Anthology of Changing Ideas''. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000. p. 800.]
The term was used by activist
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (28 August 1825 – 14 July 1895) was a German lawyer, jurist, journalist, and writer who is regarded today as a pioneer of sexology and the modern gay rights movement. Ulrichs has been described as the "first gay man in ...
in a series of five booklets from 1864 to 1865 collected under the title (''The Riddle of Man–Manly Love'').
The term ''uranian'' was adopted by English-language advocates of homosexual emancipation in the
Victorian era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...
, such as
Edward Carpenter
Edward Carpenter (29 August 1844 – 28 June 1929) was an English utopian socialist, poet, philosopher, anthologist, an early activist for gay rightsWarren Allen Smith: ''Who's Who in Hell, A Handbook and International Directory for Human ...
and
John Addington Symonds
John Addington Symonds, Jr. (; 5 October 1840 – 19 April 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. A cultural historian, he was known for his work on the Renaissance, as well as numerous biographies of writers and artists. Although m ...
, who used it to describe a comradely love that would bring about true democracy.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
once wrote to his lover
Robert Ross in an undated letter, "To have altered my life would have been to have admitted that uranian love is ignoble. I hold it to be noble—more noble than other forms."
The term
Uranians
The Uranians were a 19th-century clandestine group of up to several dozen male homosexual poets and prose writers who principally wrote on the subject of the love of (or by) adolescent boys. In a strict definition they were an English literary an ...
also designates a group of writers who studied
classics
Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...
and wrote
pederastic
Pederasty or paederasty ( or ) is a sexual relationship between an adult man and a pubescent or adolescent boy. The term ''pederasty'' is primarily used to refer to historical practices of certain cultures, particularly ancient Greece and anc ...
poetry from roughly the 1870s to the 1930s. The writings of this group came to be known by the phrase Uranian poetry. The art of
Henry Scott Tuke
Henry Scott Tuke (12 June 1858 – 13 March 1929), was an English visual artist; primarily a painter, but also a photographer. His most notable work was in the Impressionist style, and he is best known for his paintings of nude boys and young ...
and
Wilhelm von Gloeden
Wilhelm Iwan Friederich August von Gloeden (September 16, 1856 – February 16, 1931), commonly known as Baron von Gloeden, was a German photographer who worked mainly in Italy. He is mostly known for his pastoral nude studies of Sicilian boy ...
is also sometimes referred to as Uranian.
Etymology
Ulrichs derived ''uranian'' ( in German) from a dialogue on ''
eros
In Greek mythology, Eros (, ; grc, Ἔρως, Érōs, Love, Desire) is the Greek god of love and sex. His Roman counterpart was Cupid ("desire").''Larousse Desk Reference Encyclopedia'', The Book People, Haydock, 1995, p. 215. In the earli ...
'', in particular male love, metaphorized by the birth of Greek goddess
Aphrodite
Aphrodite ( ; grc-gre, Ἀφροδίτη, Aphrodítē; , , ) is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, and procreation. She was syncretized with the Roman goddess . Aphrodite's major symbols include ...
from
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
's work ''
Symposium
In ancient Greece, the symposium ( grc-gre, συμπόσιον ''symposion'' or ''symposio'', from συμπίνειν ''sympinein'', "to drink together") was a part of a banquet that took place after the meal, when drinking for pleasure was acc ...
''.
In this dialogue,
Pausanias Pausanias ( el, Παυσανίας) may refer to:
*Pausanias of Athens, lover of the poet Agathon and a character in Plato's ''Symposium''
*Pausanias the Regent, Spartan general and regent of the 5th century BC
*Pausanias of Sicily, physician of th ...
distinguishes between two types of love, symbolized by two different accounts of the birth of
Aphrodite
Aphrodite ( ; grc-gre, Ἀφροδίτη, Aphrodítē; , , ) is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, and procreation. She was syncretized with the Roman goddess . Aphrodite's major symbols include ...
, the goddess of love. was derived from
Aphrodite Urania
Aphrodite Urania ( grc, Ἀφροδίτη Οὐρανία, Aphrodítē Ouranía) was an epithet of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, signifying "heavenly" or "spiritual", to distinguish her from her more earthly aspect of Aphrodite Pandemos, "Aphrodi ...
, who was created out of the god
Uranus' semen, a birth in which "female has no part", therefore representing love between men. Its counterpart, ''dionian'' ( in German), was derived from
Aphrodite Dionea
Aphrodite ( ; grc-gre, Ἀφροδίτη, Aphrodítē; , , ) is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, and procreation. She was syncretized with the Roman goddess . Aphrodite's major symbols include ...
, the daughter of
Zeus
Zeus or , , ; grc, Δῐός, ''Diós'', label=Genitive case, genitive Aeolic Greek, Boeotian Aeolic and Doric Greek#Laconian, Laconian grc-dor, Δεύς, Deús ; grc, Δέος, ''Déos'', label=Genitive case, genitive el, Δίας, ''D ...
and
Dione Dione may refer to:
Astronomy
*106 Dione, a large main belt asteroid
*Dione (moon), a moon of Saturn
*Helene (moon), a moon of Saturn sometimes referred to as "Dione B"
Mythology
*Dione (Titaness), a Titaness in Greek mythology
*Dione (mythology) ...
, associated with a common love which "is apt to be of women as well as of youths, and is of the body rather than of the soul," representing for Ulrichs men's love for women. Diverging from Plato's account of masculine love, Ulrichs understood male to be essentially feminine and male to be masculine in nature.
Ulrichs developed his terminology before the first public use of the term ''
gay
''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'.
While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...
''.
John Addington Symonds was one of the first to take up the term ''uranian'' in the English language and is also responsible for its connection with Ulrichs' .
See also
*
Emergence of the LGBT movement
References
External links
*
{{LGBT, history=expanded
1860s neologisms
19th century in LGBT history
Gay men
Homosexuality
LGBT terminology
Male homosexuality
Sexual orientation
de:Karl Heinrich Ulrichs#Urninge und Dioninge