The Italian Vice, Italy And The Invention Of Modern Male Homosexuality
 

This book reorients our understanding of the history of modern male homosexuality by focusing on Europe's 'internal Other': Italy. Spanning from the tail-end of the Grand Tour to the mid-fascist years, it argues that Italy was a time/space in which competing epistemologies of homosexuality confronted one another - precisely what characterizes 'modern' male same-sex love and attraction. Turning our understanding of the history of male homosexuality on its head, it proposes that Italy was not primitive, pre-modern, or under-developed but modern in a way that Europe and the US were not. It also highlights the frequently overlooked role working-class men and boys played in the so-called invention of modern male homosexuality.