The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance

Valeria Finucci

Published by Duke University Press 2003

The Manly Masquerade

Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance

Valeria Finucci

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822384472

Overview
Contents

About this book

Analyzes how the body was constructed and politicized in early modern Italy by exploring literary discourses of the period - plays, novellas, travel journals, poems, etc.

Author / Editor information

Valeria Finucci is Associate Professor of Italian at Duke University. She is the author of The Lady Vanishes: Subjectivity and Representation in Castiglione and Ariosto. She is editor of Renaissance Transactions: Ariosto and Tasso and coeditor of Generation and Degeneration: Tropes of Reproduction in Literature and History from Antiquity to Early Modern Europe, both published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

"Valeria Finucci’s book questions the traditional concepts associated with the Italian Renaissance (harmony, spiritual perfection and beauty, etc.) and addresses much less ‘luminous’ aspects of sixteenth-century Italian culture."—Armando Maggi, author of Satan's Rhetoric: A Study of Renaissance Demonology

”Valeria Finucci is at it again, patrolling and illuminating the unstable boundaries of sex and gender in early modern Italian culture and literature. Relating canonical literary texts to the medical and legal culture of their times, she explores the fascination that spontaneous generation, cuckoldry, the maternal imagination, androgyny, and the deliberate manufacture of castrati held for early modern Italians—and still hold for us.”—Walter Stephens, author of Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Body and Generation in the EarlyModern Period Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 1 The Useless Genitor: Fantasies of Putrefaction andNongenealogical Births Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	37
Chapter 2 TheMasquerade of Paternity: Cuckoldry and Baby M[ale] inMachiavelli’s La mandragola Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	79
Chapter 3 PerformingMaternity: Female Imagination, Paternal Erasure, andMonstrous Birth in Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
Chapter 4 TheMasquerade ofMasculinity: Erotomania in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
Chapter 5 Androgynous Doubling andHermaphroditic Anxieties: Bibbiena’s La calandria Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
Chapter 6 TheMasquerade ofManhood: The Paradox of the Castrato Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
Selected bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	281
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	307

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages
- Main content: 328

eBook

Published: March 19, 2003
ISBN: 9780822384472