Friendship and Sociability in Early Modern England
Sir Keith Thomas
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On Monday, February 2, Sir Keith Thomas discussed
his latest research before a packed audience of faculty and
students. Titled "Friendship
and Sociability in Early Modern England," Thomas’s informative
and lively talk traced the shift in views and practices of friendship
in England from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Before
concerns about homosexuality arose, male friendships often simulated
the intimate companionship of marriage. In fact, spending too much
time with one’s wife was regarded by Jacobeans as "effeminizing." A
voluntary personal association not based on the utility of one person
to the other, friendship -- according to Thomas -- ultimately revealed
the larger political and social values at work in this era. Sir Keith
Thomas is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and his books include
Religion
and the Decline of Magic;
Man and the Natural World;
and
The Oxford Book of Work.
