Male Love: A Problem in Greek Ethics and Other Writings, Centennial Edition

SYMONDS, John Addington

LGBTQ+ Books

Pagan Press

This is the first book to deal comprehensively with the real reasons gay men are becoming sick in ways that are called AIDS.    The editors, John Lauritsen and Ian Young, and the other six contributors to The AIDS Cult examine psychological and cultural issues  the ways religious intolerance, group fantasies, toxic rugs,   pharmaceutical propaganda, deadly counselling, and a Cult of Doom have   acted together to destroy the health of gay men.    In his Introduction Ian Young writes: The orthodox view of our protracted health crisis  as a highly infectious contagion from without  has been found wanting.... we must seek the causes of this and other medical dilemmas in our own society, our own assumptions, our   group-fantasies, our regimens, our recreations, and our rituals.

The AIDS Cult: Essays on the gay health crisis

Politics & Social Sciences

John Lauritsen

Sociology

The main essay in this book, A Freethinker's Primer of Male Love, is a celebration and defence of male love from a secular humanist perspective. Its leading thesis: Male love is good; the opprobrium suffered by gay men is a product of Judeo-Christian superstition. A companion essay, Paradigms For Gay Liberation, recounts the ideas that have informed the movement. The author analyzes how the present-day movement has lost its bearings, and he indicates a way out of the thicket. There are eight Excursus: Male Beauty, The Golden Legend, Gay Christian Revisionism, Pluralistic Ignorance, Freethought, Circumcision of the Spirit, The Aster Epigrams of Plato, and A Pagan Prayer. An annotated Bibliography provides guidance for further reading.

A Freethinker's Primer of Male Love

Social Sciences

John Lauritsen debunks the myth that Frankenstein was written by a teenaged girl, Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley), who took part in a ghost-story contest in Geneva, had a nightmare, and was inspired to write a story "which would frighten my reader as I myself had been frightened that night!" Lauritsen examines the Frankenstein text, along with works that Mary Shelley wrote entirely on her own, to demonstrate that she was a weak and sentimental writer, incapable of writing Frankenstein. He takes a long, hard look at the extra-textual evidence that has been used to argue for her authorship, and shows that none of it stands up to scrutiny. In reality, Frankenstein is not just a scary story, but a work of profound and radical ideas, written in poetically powerful prose by one of the greatest poets in the English language, Percy Bysshe Shelley. For personal reasons he chose to conceal his authorship. This book has three theses: 1. Frankenstein is a great work, which has consistently been underrated and misinterpreted. 2. The real author of Frankenstein is Percy Bysshe Shelley, not his second wife, Mary. 3. Male love is a central theme of rankenstein. According to Lauritsen, male love, as romantic male friendship, is a central theme of Frankenstein. Sometimes the expressions of male love are remarkably direct, but at other times they are expressed in coded language or references known only to the "initiated". He uses his skills as a gay historian to decode and interpret these references.

The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

This book is the first publication for over 170 years of a forgotten masterpiece of translation, done by Percy Bysshe Shelley and his friend and cousin, Thomas Medwin. For four months in 1820-1821 Medwin lived with Shelley in Pisa, where the two of them intensely studied and translated the works of Aeschylus. In his Foreword, Editor John Lauritsen shows, on the basis of biographical and textual evidence, that Shelley was at least a full collaborator in the Oresteia translation. Medwin and Shelley were not concerned with servile, word-for-word translation, but with re-creating the full and entire sense -- the energy, wit, irony and pathos -- of the original. Shelley was the master of more verse forms than any other English poet, and the translation abounds in intricate verse forms: some are as familiar as the sonnet, the Spenserian stanza or the ode, while others are original. Highly acclaimed when published under Medwin's name in the 1830s (long after Shelley's death), the Oresteia translation has been unjustly neglected. Although not without flaws (some due to faulty Greek texts of the time), it surpasses modern translations for dramatic power and beauty of language. Above all the translation shows Shelley's gift for writing dialogue, which he showed in his novels, his translations of Plato and Goethe, his dramas Cenci and Prometheus Unbound, and such poems as Julian and Maddalo. While maintaining an Aeschylean formality, the language is idiomatic, and the lines can effectively be spoken. Given actors and an audience accustomed to Shakespeare, Oresteia: The Medwin-Shelley Translation could successfully be put on the stage.

Oresteia: The Medwin-Shelley Translation

Literature & Fiction

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Thomas Medwin

Translator

ÆSchylus

Dramas & Plays

Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, translated by Thomas Medwin &amp; Percy Bysshe Shelley + Prometheus Unbound by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited and with Foreword by John Lauritsen. This book contains two major works. The first is the Aeschylus play, Prometheus Bound, masterfully translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley and his cousin, Thomas Medwin. The second is Shelley's own poem, Prometheus Unbound, which is considered his masterpiece. This book also includes an appreciation of Prometheus Unbound by John Addington Symonds and the poem Prometheus by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, newly translated from the German. Editor John Lauritsen demonstrates, through biographical and textual evidence, that Shelley was the chief author of the Prometheus translation, which is a masterpiece in its own right. Shelley worked on it for years, engrossed by the theme of rebellion against tyranny dominant in the Aeschylus play and the poems by Goethe and himself. Comparisons between the Medwin-Shelley translation of Prometheus Bound and Shelley's own Prometheus Unbound show Shelley's amazing versatility at versification; he was the master of more verse forms than any other poet in English. Above all, they display Shelley's gift for dialogue, which he elsewhere demonstrated in his translations from Plato and Goethe; his play, The Cenci; and his novels. The unjustly forgotten Medwin-Shelley translation is still unequaled for dramatic power and poetry. It is one of the few translations that could effectively be put on the stage.

Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound

Published in the early to mid-19th century, Don Leon is unique in English literature. It is a powerful outcry against injustice, a moving and erudite defense of male love, and an account of Byron's sexuality, which on the whole has proven to be true. Among neglected masterpieces, Don Leon heads the list -- not only neglected, but vilified and rigorously suppressed. It is great literature. It is also pornographic, by earlier standards. The Pagan Press edition is complete and unbowdlerized, with added critical material. This is the great gay epic, a powerful reading experience and a treasure trove of information for gay scholars. This is the definitive Don Leon. To prepare it, editor John Lauritsen spent days in New York City's Morgan Library, which has the unique surviving first edition of Leon to Annabella and the oldest surviving edition of Don Leon. The two poems and the 66 pages of original notes contain many passages in Latin, Greek, French, German, and Italian. This is the first and only edition to translate them into English.   "Don Leon is certainly an important, key document of early gay dissent. You have done great work on it & I hope it does well." -- Ian Young, poet. Author: The Stonewall Experiment  "You really cannot overstate the importance of Don Leon. Ulrichs cites him at length." -- Hugh Hagius, Classics scholar. Author of Gay Hustlers of World War II.  "Indispensable new edition of Don Leon." -- Beert Verstraete, Emeritus Professor of Classics. Author: Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and in the Classical Tradition of the West, Homosexuality in Ancient Greek and Roman Civilization: A critical bibliography.  "Clearly Don Leon will be an invaluable resource, not only because all the Latin phrases etc. are translated into English." -- Rictor Norton, author: Myth of the Modern Homosexual, Mother Clap's House: The Gay Subculture in England 1700-1830.

Don Leon & Leon to Annabella

Lord Byron (allonym)

A Freethinker in Alcoholics Anonymous is written by an A.A. member with 46 years of continuous sobriety, who believes that he owes his life to the A.A. Fellowship. There are plenty of books that attack Alcoholics Anonymous or defend it uncritically or supplement it with personal testimonies or various tweaks. A Freethinker in Alcoholics Anonymous will be the first one to celebrate and defend the things in A.A. that are right, but also, with no holds barred, to criticize the things that are wrong and ought to be changed.
 An atheist for all of his adult life and a long-time contributor to the secular humanist press, Lauritsen bases his recovery on the what he calls the True A.A., the A.A, that works: the 24-Hour Plan and the Fellowship. He regards the religiosity in A.A. as detrimental to recovery from alcoholism.
 A Freethinker in Alcoholics Anonymous is especially written for nonbelievers in recovery, who face difficult choices: going it alone or attending regular A.A. groups, secular A.A. groups, or secular alternative groups. But everyone who has an alcohol problem, or who knows someone who has one, can benefit from this book.
 Chapters describe Lauritsen's experiences in recovery, his analyses of the 24-Hour Plan and the A.A. Fellowship, his research on early A.A. history and forerunners of A.A., his objections to recitation of the "Lord's Prayer" in meetings, "A Freethinker's Steps for Recovery from Alcoholism", a heavily annotated Select Bibliography on Alcoholism, suggestions on how freethinkers can gain fellowship without sacrificing their principles, and his conclusions on how A.A. should be reformed.

A Freethinker in Alcoholics Anonymous

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Addiction & Recovery

In this book, gay historian John Lauritsen tells a story that will not be found in standard biographies. In 1822, two great poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and George Gordon, Lord Byron lived in Pisa, Italy, together with three friends. They met daily in Byron's palazzo. Although these men had wives and children, male love was an important part of their lives. They thought of themselves as pariahs in exile , and for good reason. Men and boys in their home country, England, were being hanged for having sex with each other, whereas Italy had no such laws. All of them were ardent Hellenists, who knew that male love had flourished in Ancient Greece the same male love that was persecuted in their own time. Despite the censorious efforts of friends and family, ample evidence survives that they loved other males. Homoeroticism in their works was usually coded for the initiated , but was sometimes amazingly candid. John Lauritsen de-codes homoerotic references, reinterprets major works of English Romanticism, and places all in historical context. He states: Love and sex between males is an ordinary, healthy part of the human sexual repertoire. For too long, biographers have falsified the love lives of the Shelley-Byron men. The time has come to bring them into the light of day. I am especially taken by your reading of Epipsychidion, for I am entirely convinced that Emily is indeed Edward Williams. Your reading makes Shelley's poem one of the grandest and most beautiful outpourings in any poetry I have read of one man's love for another. -- Beert Verstraete, Emeritus Professor of Classics. Editor: Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and in the Classical Tradition of the West. Author: Homosexuality in Ancient Greek and Roman Civilization: A critical bibliography. I enjoyed your book on Shelley and Byron very much. It is an imperative and necessary book. I read it in one swoop one evening and was so enlivened that I could not sleep. ... I found everything to admire. I knew much of the Shelley stuff and was substituting the gender in Epipsychidion and reflecting on Shelley's homoerotic feelings many years ago, but you fill in the evidential detail excellently. ... Byron I knew less about. He was obviously very close to Shelley, but I think their attitude to sexuality was very different: Shelley wanted a soul mate with deep feelings while Byron was a rover who sought sexual relationships wherever possible. -- Jim Herrick, former Editor of The Freethinker (London) and The New Humanist (London). Author of Humanism: An Introduction. Well reasoned and persuasive. -- Andrew Calimach, author: Lovers' Legends: The Gay Greek Myths.

The Shelley-Byron Men: Lost angels of a ruined paradise

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