Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern EnglandCambridge University Press, 1996 M03 14 - 225 pages To recent studies of Renaissance subjectivity, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England contributes the argument that masculinity is unavoidably anxious and volatile in cultures that distribute power and authority according to patriarchal prerogatives. Drawing from current arguments in feminism, cultural studies, historicism, psychoanalysis and gay studies, Mark Breitenberg explores the dialectic of desire and anxiety in masculine subjectivity in the work of a wide range of writers, including Shakespeare, Bacon, Burton, and the women writers of the "querelles des femmes" debate, especially Jane Anger. Breitenberg discusses jealousy and cuckoldry anxiety, hetero and homoerotic desire, humoural psychology, anatomical difference, cross-dressing and the idea of honor and reputation. He traces masculine anxiety both as a sign of ideological contradiction and, paradoxically, as a productive force in the perpetuation of Western patriarchal systems. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Fearful fluidity Burtons Anatomy of Melancholy | 35 |
Purity and the dissemination of knowledge in Bacons new science | 69 |
Publishing chastity Shakespeares The Rape of Lucrece | 97 |
The anatomy of masculine desire in Loves Labors Lost | 128 |
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Common terms and phrases
Anatomy anxious masculinity apparel argues articulates authority Bacon's body Burton chaste chastity Collatine Collatine's construction of woman contradictions Coppélia critical cross-dressing cuckoldry cuckoldry anxiety cultural dangerous Desdemona difference discourse discussion dissemination early modern England early modern period Elizabethan erotic example fear female chastity female sexuality feminine figure functions gender Gorboduc hath Hic Mulier historical homoerotic homoeroticism homosocial humoural psychology Iago Ibid imagination interpretive knowledge language literary London Louis Montrose Love's Labor's Lost Lucrece Lucrece's lust male subjectivity marriage masculine anxiety masculine desire masculine honor masculine identity masculine subject melancholy metaphor Mulier nature object Othello paradox passage patriarchal patrilineal Petrarchan Petrarchism play poem political psychoanalysis purity rape Rape of Lucrece Renaissance representation represented reveals rhetoric sexual jealousy Shakespeare's social sodomy sonnet sonnet 20 Sowernam specific status suggests Swetnam symbolic Tarquin texts threat threatening tion University Press Vickers women women's sexuality words writing