RT Book
T1 Policing same-sex relations in eighteenth-century Paris: archival voices from 1785
A2 Merrick, Jeffrey
LA English
PP University Park, PA
PB Penn State University Press
YR 2024
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/189172018X
AB Police in Paris arrested thousands of men for sodomy or similar acts in the eighteenth century. In the mid-1780s, they recorded depositions in which prisoners recounted their own sexual histories. These remarkable documents, curated and translated into English by Jeffrey Merrick, allow us to hear the voices of men who desired men and to explore complex questions about sources, patterns, and meanings in the history of sexuality.This volume centers on two cartons of paperwork from commissaire Charles Convers Desormeaux. Dated from 1785, the cartons contain 221 dossiers of men arrested for sodomy or similar acts in Paris. Merrick translates and annotates the police interviews from these dossiers, revealing how the police and those they arrested understood sex between men at the time. Merrick discusses the implications of what the men said (and what they did not say), how they said it, and in what contexts it was said.The best-known works of clergy and jurists, of enemies and advocates of Enlightenment, and of novelists and satirists from the eighteenth century tell us nothing at all about the lived experience of men who desired men. In these police dossiers, Merrick allows them to speak in their own words. This primary text brings together a wealth of important information that will appeal to scholars, students, and general readers interested in the history of sexuality, sodomy, and sexual policing
OP 264
CN HQ76.2.F82
SN 978-0-271-09836-4
K1 Male homosexuality : France : Paris : History : 18th century : Sources
K1 Sodomy : France : Paris : History : 18th century : Sources
K1 HISTORY / Europe / France
K1 HISTORY / Modern / 18th Century
K1 LAW / Legal History
K1 Charles Convers Desormeaux
K1 Enlightenment
K1 Paris
K1 eighteenth-century France
K1 history of sexuality
K1 homosexuality
K1 interviews
K1 lived experience of men who desired men
K1 oral histories
K1 police dossiers
K1 police
K1 public spaces
K1 sodomy
K1 Quelle
K1 Kommentar
DO 10.1515/9780271098364