Modern Language Review

This collection offers a sampling of the complexity of masculinity in premodern Europe. In chronological breadth, the collection ranges from first-century Merovingian Gaul to the eighteenth century. The essays gesture to the variability of masculinity precisely because of its ties to the male body, which, whether in representation or in reality, was mutable. As Jacqueline Murray remarks in her Introduction, ‘just as there was no one masculinity, so too there was no single perfect male body’ in premodern Europe (p. 17).

The volume is divided into two parts. The first, ‘Imperfect Bodies: Gender and Social Liminality,’ comprises a series of essays that each concern the malleability of the boundaries of masculinity. H. Peter Johnsson reveals the interdependence of two opposing conceptions of masculinity through the styling of hair in Frankish lay and clerical culture. While among the Frankish laity the cutting of one’s hair was seen as a shameful act of submission, tonsure in the religious context represented a spiritual triumph over worldly delights. Both Alison More and Sara K. Berkowitz illuminate premodern figures of masculine liminality, whose liminal status procured them each a particular position with regard to their masculinity. More’s essay examines Cistercian laybrothers or conversi, who dwelt between the secular and religious worlds of medieval Belgium. Berkowitz’s essay regards seventeenth-century portrayals of the castrati, whose corporeality lingered between the adolescent boy and adult man. Both the laybrothers and the castrati figured in premodern cultural productions as situated somewhere between or in the mixing of femininity and masculinity. Nevertheless, both figures were praised and revered for attributes specific to their status. Yvonne Petry and Kiegan Lloyd’s essay on social, judicial, and religious views of impotence in early modern France and Elena Brizio’s study of legal manœuvres employed by Sienese families lacking a male heir both gesture to the implication of women in cases where the continuation of the patriarchal line is called into question. Pinpointing different conditions in which the male body is cast as imperfect—hairy or hairless, bearded or beardless, castrated, impotent— this section also illuminates the contingency and limitations of this interpretation. The ‘imperfect’ male body could exhibit distinguished qualities sought after in various contexts or find other ways to affirm its masculinity—such as the complex [End Page 351] manipulation of inheritances to preserve family wealth in the absence of a male heir.

The second section, ‘Perfect Bodies: Masculinity, Idealism, and Contingency’, attends to the valorization of distinct masculinities in particular contexts. Ivana Elbl recontextualizes the figure of Dom Henrique of Portugal in social and court life and argues that his self-attribution of virginity, though exceptional, fits his lifelong pursuit of virtus and stylization as a Christian warrior. Timothy McCall similarly resituates depictions of Borso d’Este that certain scholars have characterized as effeminate within the context of their production, and convincingly problematizes approaches to premodern masculinity that are unable to cast off contemporary notions of the masculine. Following his persuasive argumentation for these representations’ adherence to dominant conceptions of masculinity in the signoria, McCall’s final assertion of the queer potential inherent in Renaissance power structures seems incomplete. Maya Corry’s essay, appositely positioned after McCall’s, offers a compelling analysis of homoeroticism’s imbrication in power structures of elite sociality in Renaissance Milan. Through an analysis of the rehabilitation of epicene youthful beauty in the Milanese court, Corry outlines a poignant example of the ways in which ‘to endure, patriarchy has had to be mutable and available to diverse populations of men’ (p. 212). The section’s final two essays centre on art and the visual construction of masculine ideals. Tatiana C. String reveals early modern English portraiture’s reliance on ‘stock’ figures and poses which were employed to inscribe individuals within dominant conceptions of archetypal masculinity. Fabien Lacouture’s essay, which closes the volume, traces...