Antimasonic Satire, Sodomy, and Eighteenth-Century Masculinity in the "Boston Evening-Post"

Thomas A Foster

13 citations0/0 files storedThe William and Mary Quarterly

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Gender and Feminist Studies Libraries, Manuscripts, and Books Historical and Literary Analyses

Abstract

N January 7, 1751, readers of the Boston Evening-Post found a full-column poetic letter, entitled In Defence of Masonry, occupying half of the front page. At the top was one of the earliest engravings accompanying a poem to appear in a newspaper. It depicted two men, one bent over, the other penetrating him with a trunnel, or wooden spike. Here graphic imagery with sodomitical overtones accompanied stanzas containing phallic references and allusions to homoerotic group activities. Sodomy was still a capital crime in eighteenth-century Massachusetts-could symbolic sodomy have been a source of emasculating satire?1

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