Synopses & Reviews
Explores the importance of heterosexual masculine identity in Renaissance literature and culture.
Review
"The book is deeply grounded in current approaches to gender and culture, and it contributes usefully to those discussions." B.E. Brandt, Choice
Review
"In Anxious Masculinity Mark Breitenberg has done a superb job of elucidating and untangling numerous of the elements and contradictions of the early modern sex-gender system." Michael M. Holmes, Essays in Theatre
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
Explores the importance of heterosexual masculine identity in Renaissance literature and culture.
Synopsis
The importance of heterosexual masculine identity in Renaissance culture is explored through the work of a wide range of writers, including Shakespeare, Montaigne, Bacon, Burton, and Jane Anger. Mark Breitenberg traces masculine anxiety as both a problem and a productive force in the perpetuation of patriarchal ideologies.
Synopsis
The widespread preoccupation with cuckoldry in Renaissance drama demonstrates the importance of heterosexual masculine identity in Renaissance culture. Mark Breitenberg draws on the work of a wide range of writers, including Shakespeare, Montaigne, Bacon, Burton and Jane Anger, to discuss such issues as jealousy and cuckoldry, heterosexual desire, and the âquerelles des femmesâdebate. He traces masculine anxiety both as a sign of ideological contradictions and as a productive force in the perpetuation of patriarchal ideologies in a gendered economy.
Synopsis
Widespread preoccupation with cuckoldry in Renaissance drama demonstrates the importance of heterosexual masculine identity in the culture. Including Shakespeare, Montaigne, Bacon, Burton and Jane Anger, this text discusses jealousy and cuckoldry, heterosexual desire, the "querelles des femmes" debate, etc.
Table of Contents
Introduction; 1. Fearful fluidity: Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy; 2. Purity and the dissemination of knowledge in Bacon's new science; 3. Publishing chastity: Shakespeare's 'The Rape of Lucrece'; 4. The anatomy of masculine desire in Love's Labour's Lost; 5. Inscriptions of difference: cross-dressing, androgyny and the anatomical imperative; 6. Ocular proof: sexual jealousy and the anxiety of interpretation.