Since the publication of Alan Bray’s Homosexuality in Renaissance England three decades ago, much of the research about eroticism in early modern England has revolved around the question of whether some form of sexual identity existed in the earlier era. This paper seeks to explore — and perhaps transform — the critical discussion about this issue by expanding our focus to include not only individuals with homosexual desires, but also those with a penchant for sexual flagellation. There is a remarkably rich discourse about “flogging cullies,” including a medical treatise entitled The Use of Flogging in Venereal Affairs (1639), over twenty court cases featuring individuals who like to be “whipped into their lechery,” several accounts of “flogging bawdy houses,” and numerous pornographic depictions. What do these representations tell us about the construction of sexual identity in the earlier period? And how do they transform — or complicate — the scholarly discourse about this issue?

—Will Fisher, The Graduate Center, CUNY