Abstract

Italian Sexualities Uncovered, 1789–1914 breaks new ground in the history of nineteenth-century Italy. It brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars to explore nineteenth-century Italian sexualities from a variety of viewpoints, illuminating the relationships between the personal and political; the presence of male, female and same-sex desires that defied norms of respectability and acceptable gender roles; the sexual behaviour of different classes and subcultures; and transnational sexual encounters. This volume sheds light on the sex lives of nineteenth-century men and women in Italy, on the ways they understood and experienced their sexual desires, and how their sexual behaviour was organised, regulated and constrained.