1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910154571203321

Autore

Long Kathleen P. <1957-, >

Titolo

Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe / / Kathleen P. Long

Pubbl/distr/stampa

London ; ; New York : , : Routledge, , 2016

ISBN

1-351-93082-6

1-138-25938-1

1-315-25336-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (279 pages) : illustrations

Collana

Women and gender in the early modern world

Disciplina

809.335266

Soggetti

Intersexuality - History

Intersexuality - Europe - History - 16th century

Renaissance

Gender identity - Europe - History - 16th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

First published 2006 by Ashgate.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

1. Sexual dissonance : early modern scientific accounts of hermaphrodism -- 2. The cultural and medical construction of gender : Caspar Bauhin -- 3. Jacques Duval on hermaphrodites : culture wars in the medical profession -- 4. Hermetic hermaphrodites -- 5. Gender and power in the alchemical works of Clovis Hesteau de Nuysement -- 6. Lyric hermaphrodites -- 7. The royal hermaphrodite : Henri III of France -- 8. Hermaphrodites newly discovered : the cultural monsters of early modern France.

Sommario/riassunto

Kathleen Long explores the use of the hermaphrodite in early modern culture wars, both to question traditional theorizations of gender roles and to reaffirm those views. These cultural conflicts were fueled by the discovery of a new world, by the Reformation and the backlash against it, by nascent republicanism directed against dissolute kings, and by the rise of empirical science and its subsequent confrontation with the traditional university system. For the Renaissance imagination, the hermaphrodite came to symbolize these profound and intense changes that swept across Europe, literally embodying these conflicts. Focusing on early modern France, with references to Switzerland and Germany, this work traces the symbolic use of the hermaphrodite across a range



of disciplines and domains - medical, alchemical, philosophical, poetic, fictional, and political - and demonstrates how these seemingly disparate realms interacted extensively with each other in this period, also across national boundaries. This widespread use and representation of the hermaphrodite established a ground on which new ideas concerning sex and gender could be elaborated by subsequent generations, and on which a wide range of thought concerning identity, racial, religious, and national as well as gender, could be deployed.