Early Modern Hermaphrodites : Sex and Other Stories
Literature, Modern Sociology Early Modern/Renaissance Literature Gender Studies
Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan
2002
1st ed. 2002.
EISBN 1280444312
Machine generated contents note: Introduction: Sex and Other Stories 1.
1 On Gods and Monsters: Defining the Early Moder Hermaphrodite 9.
The androgynous ideal: religious and philosophical images 14.
The embodied sign: monstrous hermaphroditism 19.
Masculine, feminine and hermaphrodite: hermaphroditized gender 25.
2 Telling the Truth of Sex: the Hermaphrodite in Biology and Law 33.
Sexual difference/sameness: the biology of hermaphroditism 35.
Legal problems and hermaphroditic solutions 41.
3 Both and Neither: Rewriting Ovid's Hermaphrodite 51.
More than a man, less than a woman: Elizabeth I and hermaphroditic androgyny 52.
Metamorphic origins: Ovid's 'Salmacis and Hermaphroditus' 57.
'A worthy sense': moral readings and rewritings 60.
'Their nature knowne too much': the Jacobean and Caroline contexts 64.
Hermes and Aphrodite: the parentage of Hermaphroditus 68.
'Wanton lines': Beaumont's epyllion 70.
4 Mingle-Mangle: Masculine Women and Feminine Men 77.
Acting out of gender: the debate 81.
'Nature topsie-turvie': siblings, doubling and division 85.
Performing gender: Mary Frith/Moll Cutpurse 92.
'Rare enigmatick Robbin': hermaphroditic relationships 97.
5 Every Heteroclite Part: the Monstrous Hermaphrodite and the English Revolution 104.
'Thy right legge takes thy left to dance': Cleveland's hermaphrodite 106.
'Fortune's jigg': the hermaphrodite image in the popular press 118.
(En)Gendering power: the hermaphroditic body politic 126.
Re-membering power 132.
6 Seeing and Knowing: Science, Pornography and the Hermaphrodite 136.
Seeing and knowing 137.
The science of pornography/the pornography of science 139.
Naming the parts: the hermaphrodite as object of enquiry 142.
Case histories, curiosities and display 144.
Foreign parts: tribades, hermaphrodites and colonialism 149.
Unspeakable desires: the hermaphrodite as erotic entertainment 154.
Epilogue: Re/covering the Early Modern Hermaphrodite 158.
From the sixteenth century to the eighteenth century, hermaphrodites were discussed and depicted in a range of artistic, mythological, scientific and erotic contexts. Early Modern Hermaphrodites looks at some of those representations to explore the stories they tell about ambiguous sex and gender in early modern England. Gilbert examines the often contradictory ways in which hermaphrodites were represented as both spiritual ideals and sexual grotesques; as freaks, erotic objects and medical curiosities' and as literary metaphors and signs of social decay.
1 On Gods and Monsters: Defining the Early Moder Hermaphrodite 9.
The androgynous ideal: religious and philosophical images 14.
The embodied sign: monstrous hermaphroditism 19.
Masculine, feminine and hermaphrodite: hermaphroditized gender 25.
2 Telling the Truth of Sex: the Hermaphrodite in Biology and Law 33.
Sexual difference/sameness: the biology of hermaphroditism 35.
Legal problems and hermaphroditic solutions 41.
3 Both and Neither: Rewriting Ovid's Hermaphrodite 51.
More than a man, less than a woman: Elizabeth I and hermaphroditic androgyny 52.
Metamorphic origins: Ovid's 'Salmacis and Hermaphroditus' 57.
'A worthy sense': moral readings and rewritings 60.
'Their nature knowne too much': the Jacobean and Caroline contexts 64.
Hermes and Aphrodite: the parentage of Hermaphroditus 68.
'Wanton lines': Beaumont's epyllion 70.
4 Mingle-Mangle: Masculine Women and Feminine Men 77.
Acting out of gender: the debate 81.
'Nature topsie-turvie': siblings, doubling and division 85.
Performing gender: Mary Frith/Moll Cutpurse 92.
'Rare enigmatick Robbin': hermaphroditic relationships 97.
5 Every Heteroclite Part: the Monstrous Hermaphrodite and the English Revolution 104.
'Thy right legge takes thy left to dance': Cleveland's hermaphrodite 106.
'Fortune's jigg': the hermaphrodite image in the popular press 118.
(En)Gendering power: the hermaphroditic body politic 126.
Re-membering power 132.
6 Seeing and Knowing: Science, Pornography and the Hermaphrodite 136.
Seeing and knowing 137.
The science of pornography/the pornography of science 139.
Naming the parts: the hermaphrodite as object of enquiry 142.
Case histories, curiosities and display 144.
Foreign parts: tribades, hermaphrodites and colonialism 149.
Unspeakable desires: the hermaphrodite as erotic entertainment 154.
Epilogue: Re/covering the Early Modern Hermaphrodite 158.
From the sixteenth century to the eighteenth century, hermaphrodites were discussed and depicted in a range of artistic, mythological, scientific and erotic contexts. Early Modern Hermaphrodites looks at some of those representations to explore the stories they tell about ambiguous sex and gender in early modern England. Gilbert examines the often contradictory ways in which hermaphrodites were represented as both spiritual ideals and sexual grotesques; as freaks, erotic objects and medical curiosities' and as literary metaphors and signs of social decay.
