Author Katie Boulter
The invitation to snog, rated highly on my desired list but discovering why a snog has surprising cultural power or why Christians excelled at kissing, had its little hook embedded line and sinker. I am referring to Katie Barclay’s epic novel THE KISS : A HISTORY OF PASSION AND POWER where amongst many pearls she offers is the statement that kisses may have caused shame, passion, jealousy and anger but they may be the product of loss and grief, as well as longing.
This tome of interesting facts and conjectures regarding oscillating is resource rich, eminently researched and poignantly pertinent, bringing to light that in 1499 England, everyone puckered up, beggaring the belief that something so instinctive and natural, has a history as well.
Barclay, affectionately called the ‘historian of emotions’ writes, “its not seen in all cultures, its meanings have changed proportionally from foot-kissing knights to baby-kissing politicians, amping-up to the “shut-up” kiss of Hollywood romances”. This led to, by the end of the nineteenth century, a growing emphasis on romantic marriage whereby lip-kissing became the domain of love and specifically sex. Anxieties about sex kept the agenda on the boil with censors alarmed between the wars by frank portrayals of desire on the screen and quite literally in literature.
Today the public debate centres on consent with even the most spontaneous of kisses regarded with power and politics. The book explores a millennium of kisses, asking how and why the kiss has retained its power over the centuries, and what it might mean today from the furtive kisses of Heloise and Abelard to the Godfather’s “kiss of death”. The author explores how the kiss can be romantic, peaceful, transgressive, intimate, erotic, and more, from Shakespeare to Byron. The book is richly illustrated with fascinating examples that make one ponder our thinking when viewing history’s rich tapestry of intimate snogging.
In essence, the book tells the surprising history of our most intimate gesture, the kiss, and asks why it has retained its power over the centuries, especially what it means today. I found a fascination in what the book reveals about our cultural inheritance via art, song and literature, and how it traces the cultural power of the humble snog. Its a richly detailed with pockets of genuine surprise by the author who has has an enviable talent for uncovering forgotten meanings in the most ordinary practices, doing a superb job of showing that the history of kissing has much more nuance than just romance. Barclay exposes the deep roots invested in how we understand and experience the kiss today, tracing a line from medieval times to the #MeToo generation.
We start the charter of the kiss with Henry II of England refusal to go full mouth to mouth with his former friend Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, upon his return from exile in France. the kiss was the customary conclusion of a peace negotiation evidencing good will for the future by a public snog. Henry declined, spelling doom for his old chum by being assassinated a few days later, spelling a big No-No from Henry . The kiss was the diplomatic way to settle disputes, as was occasioned in religious services to greet one another with a holy smooch. Many a Christian saint following the words of the apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans, imploring the greeting of one to another with a kiss, suffered the loss of a nose, lips, hands and feet in their devotional willingness to kiss lepers. Giving a leper some love is a far cry from the image on the cover of Katie Barclay’s book depicting a widely reproduced 1859 painting by Italian Francesco Hayez in which a couple kitted out in medieval garb kiss, he bends over his lover cradling her face. she leans backwards, holding his shoulder for support, as they engage in a kiss.
Barclay confesses to not being interested in the romantic snog but was drawn more to the silly ones, the rude and naughty ones. She sought out kisses that were bad ideas, dangerous ones, but also harvested a plethora of insights into ones between parents, children, friends and enemies. She also notes that kisses in a time-warp were acceptable in one period and place but thought rude or even criminal in another. Arse kissing is an enlightening reveal, as exemplified in a 700 year old doodle in the margin of a French manuscript showing a dog kissing a monkey’s behind, which was the inversion of a holy kiss used by heretics and witches to shame and humiliate others, keep them seperate from the Christian community, marking the individuals or groups as sinful . In 1499 England, quite different to the continent, everyone puckered-up, so much so that it beggars belief that something so instinctive and natural, has a history at all, writes the author, labeled the ‘historian of emotions’. Adding that its not seen in all cultures with its meanings changed proportionately from foot-kissing knights to kissing-babes by politicians, leading to the “shut-up kiss” of Hollywood romance.
Anxieties about sex kept this agenda on the boil with censors alarmed between the wars, by frank portrayals of desire on the scree. And in popular literature. Today, the public debate centers on consent with even the most spontaneous of kisses regarded with power and politics. There are plenty of illustrations in this handsome hardcover book. Katie Barclay is a historian of love and relationship who has published widely in the field of emotional history, gender history, law and family life. She has authored seven books while being a Professor of history at Macquarie University. She is the winner of the 2012 Senior Hume Brown prize in Scottish History and the same year the recipient of the Women’s Network (UK) Book Prize.
