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.