Sheds new light on how masculinity was understood, lived, performed and viewed during a period of huge change. Premodern masculinity was multivalent and dynamic, a series of intersecting, conflicting, and mutating identities that nevertheless were distinct and recognizable to people and their societies. The articles collected here examine a variety of means by which masculinity was constructed, deconstructed, and transformed across time, geographies, and cultures. Articles range across the twelfth to seventeenth century, from western Europe to the Volga-Ural region, from the Christian west to the Muslim east, from Ottomans to Mongols and Persians, from Baudri of Bourgueil to Blaise de Monluc; while topics include the chivalric hero, the effeminate man, beards, and spurs, represented variously in literature, historical documents, and art. Finally, in that period of great transformation that is the sixteenth century, they show how masculinity moved away from the traditional and recognizable to become something different and distinct from its premodern expressions.

A richly textured cultural history that investigates the characterization of the sex of adult male bodies before the Enlightenment.

Sex, Gender and Sexuality in Renaissance Italy explores the new directions being taken in the study of sex and gender in Italy from 1300 to 1700 and highlights the impact that recent scholarship has had in revealing innovative ways of approaching this subject. In this interdisciplinary volume, twelve scholars of history, literature, art history, and philosophy use a variety of both textual and visual sources to examine themes such as gender identities and dynamics, sexual transgression and sexual identities in leading Renaissance cities. It is divided into three sections, which work together to provide an overview of the influence of sex and gender in all aspects of Renaissance society from politics and religion to literature and art. Part I: Sex, Order, and Disorder deals with issues of law, religion, and violence in marital relationships; Part II: Sense and Sensuality in Sex and Gender considers gender in relation to the senses and emotions; and Part III: Visualizing Sexuality in Word and Image investigates gender, sexuality, and erotica in art and literature. Bringing to life this increasingly prominent area of historical study, Sex, Gender and Sexuality in Renaissance Italy is ideal for students of Renaissance Italy and early modern gender and sexuality.

This book focuses on the multiple and diverse masculinities ‘at work’. Spanning both historical approaches to the rise of ‘profession’ as a marker of masculinity, and critical approaches to the current structures of management, employment and workplace hierarchy, the book questions what role masculinity plays in cultural understandings, affective experiences and mediatised representations of a professional ‘career’.

Publisher Description

Finalist for the 2019 Edinburgh Gadda Prize This book explores intersectional constructions of race and whiteness in modern and contemporary Italy. It contributes to transnational and interdisciplinary reflections on these issues through an analysis of political debates and social practices, focusing in particular on visual materials from the unification of Italy (1861) to the present day. Giuliani draws attention to rearticulations of the transnationally constructed Italian ‘colonial archive’ in Italian racialised identity-politics and cultural racisms across processes of nation building, emigration, colonial expansion, and the construction of the first post-fascist Italian society. The author considers the ‘figures of race’ peopling the Italian colonial archive as composing past and present ideas and representations of (white) Italianness and racialised/gendered Otherness. Students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including Italian studies, political philosophy, sociology, history, visual and cultural studies, race and whiteness studies and gender studies, will find this book of interest.

In studies on premodern masculinities that have enriched scholarship in recent years, relatively little attention has been paid to the eroticizing of the male body. Masculinities and Representation seeks to fill this lacuna, illustrating how gender construction served to affirm but also diversify premodern masculinity. In so doing, this collection details how, as a social construct, masculinity was not a single concept, but a dynamic and intricate notion. Focusing on the premodern period, Masculinities and Representation reveals how heteronormative masculinity was affirmed, but also how it was challenged when the male body was eroticized in art, literature, and devotion, or when “masculine” norms were transgressed by the assumption of “feminine” behaviours. Ultimately, the book demonstrates how masculinity itself could be transgressive in its focus of affection or in its inherent ambiguities.

DiGangi analyses the relation between homoeroticism and social power in a range of literary and historical texts from the 1580s to the 1620s, drawing on insights from materialist, queer and feminist theory to show the centrality of homoerotic practices.

Headline: A study of how Italian films re-envisage male identity in response to sexual liberationBlurb: Italian cinema has traditionally used the trope of an inadequate man in crisis to reflect on the country's many social and political upheavals. Masculinity and Italian Cinema examines how this preoccupation with male identity becomes especially acute in the 1970s when a set of more diverse and inclusive images of men emerge in response to the rise of feminism and gay liberation. Through an analysis of the way Italian films explore anxieties about male sexuality and femininity, the book shows how such anxieties also intersect with particular preoccupations about national identity and political engagement. This is an essential study-tool to understand the multiple constructions of masculinity in Italian cinema, helping students and researchers to understand the work of some of Italy's most provocative filmmakers.Key Features* Re-examines key Italian films, including Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist, Ettore Scola's A Special Day, Pier Paolo Pasolini's Theorem and Lina Wertmuller's The Seduction of Mimi, in the light of gender and queer theory.* Covers the major thematic concerns, genres and stylistic traits of 1970s Italian political cinema* Analyses the broader cultural context of 1970s Italy, including sections on Italian feminism, Gay liberation and the post-'68 social movements.Key Words: Gender; Queer; Body; Gay; Feminism; Pier Paolo Pasolini; Bernardo Bertolucci; Lina Wertmuller; Nanni Moretti; Federico Fellini; Ettore Scola; Marco Ferreri.