Reading for gender

Abstract

This essay serves to introduce the collection of articles in the present issue on the subject of the ‘History of Early Modern Masculinities’. It addresses the place of masculinity in early-modern historiography, highlights neglected areas of research, outlines methodological challenges and suggests new directions in the study of gender.

Keywords::

• body
• early modern
• gender
• masculinity
• Reformation
• Renaissance
• sex
• sexuality

Acknowledgements

For their generous support of the Histories of Early Modern Masculinities Workshop in November 2013, we thank the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, the University of Connecticut Research Foundation, the Departments of English and History, the Office of the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, John A. Davis (the Noether Chair in Modern Italian History), Robert A. Gross (the Draper Chair in Early American History), the Department of Languages, Cultures and Literatures, and the Center for Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. We are also indebted to Alexandra Shepard for her participation and generous and insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. , “Gender;” eadem, “Unanswered Questions.”

^2. It is interesting to note that, although her recent collection includes several contributions by early-modernists, Anne-Marie Sohn's introductory essay surveying the historiography omits the early-modern period: Sohn, “Introduction.” The historical study of masculinity in early-modern England, much of it focused on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is more developed than that of most regions of Europe in the period. Influential studies over the past two decades that centre on England include Cohen, Fashioning Masculinity; Foyster, Manhood; Hitchcock and Cohen, English Masculinities; , “Semiotics of Masculinity” and Three-Piece Suit; and especially Shepard, Meanings of Manhood.

^3. Among recent contributions: Campana, The Pain of Reformation; Colantuono, Titian; Gallucci, Cellini; Ellis, Old Age, Masculinity; Finucci, Manly Masquerade; Levy, Re-membering Masculinity; Long, High Anxiety; Milligan and Tylus, Poetics of Masculinity; , “Alert and Erect,” and Sex of Men; Springer, Armour and Masculinity. Notable earlier contributions by non-historians include that of the cultural theorist Mark Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinity (1996).

^4. For an early contribution on the distinctive aspects of masculinity in early-modern Catholic society, see Cavallo, “Bachelorhood;” see also the articles edited by Julia Hairston, “Gender in Early Modern Rome.” A particularly influential study of masculinity in Protestant society has been , Meanings of Manhood, which includes an extensive bibliography on early-modern England; see also eadem, “Manhood, Patriarchy and Gender.” Two important recent edited collections, largely centred on Protestant societies, are Hendrix and Karant-Nunn, Masculinity, and Broomhall and Van Gent, Governing Masculinities.

^5. To encourage readers in similar cross-chronological and interdisciplinary explorations, we include in this issue revised commentaries by Jane Tylus, Fiona Somerset and Joseph Campana. We thank them and Alexis Boylan, Rosa Helena Chinchilla, Cornelia Dayton, Micki McElya and Cathy Schlund-Vials for generously sharing their time and expertise, as well as for making this theme issue a truly collective undertaking.

^6.Sohn, “Introduction,” 24.

^7.Connell, Masculinities, 76–81. One exemplary exception is Harvey and Shepard, “What Have Historians Done with Masculinity?”

^8.Gouwens, “Emasculation as Empowerment.”

^9.Martin, “Michel de Montaigne's Embodied Masculinity.”

^10.Behrend-Martínez, “Spain Violated;” and Hardwick, “Policing Paternity.”

^11.Tylus, “Invincible Masculinities.”

^12.Kane, “Masculinity and Political Geographies in England, Ireland and North America;” and Tlusty, “Invincible Blades and Invulnerable Bodies.”

^13.Shepard, Meanings of Manhood, 68–9, 87–9.

^14.Nussdorfer, “Masculine Hierarchies in Roman Ecclesiastical Households.”

^15.Campana, “Distribution, Assemblage, Capacity.”

^16. Of course, the triumph of the category “early-modern” has come at a cost: see the perceptive comments of , “Early Modern Muddle;” “Who's Afraid of the Renaissance?;” and “A Postmodern Renaissance?”

^17. For an influential application of postcolonial theory to the reading of Petrarch, see Dagenais, “Postcolonial Laura.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kenneth Gouwens

Laurie Nussdorfer is William F. Armstrong Professor of History and Letters at Wesleyan University. The author of Civic Politics in the Rome of Urban VIII (1992) and Brokers of Public Trust: Notaries in Early Modern Rome (2009), she is currently working on a book on men and masculinities in Baroque Rome.

Brendan Kane

Brendan Kane is Associate Professor of History and Associate Director of the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut. Among his recent publications are Nobility and Newcomers in Renaissance Ireland (with Thomas Herron, 2013) and The Politics and Culture of Honour in Britain and Ireland, 1541–1641 (2010).

Laurie Nussdorfer

Kenneth Gouwens is Associate Professor of History at the University of Connecticut, USA. His publications include Remembering the Renaissance: Humanist Narratives of the Sack of Rome (1998); and a critical edition and translation of Paolo Giovio, Notable Men and Women – Dialogus de viris et feminis aetate nostra florentibus (2013).