Crocker, Holly A.

English

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The most disappointing chapter for the historian of women and gender isChapter Five ("Funerary Feasting in Early Medieval Gaul and NeighboringRegions," 69-91). Effros devotes most ofthe chapter to wrangling with BailyK. Young concerning the extent to which funerary feasting and the depositionof foodstuffs in graves even were current practices in Merovingian Gaul at all.She refers to (75), but does not explore the gendered dimensions of, the fa-mous controversy between Ambrose of Milan and Augustine's mother Monicaover the latter's desire to stage feasts in honor of the martyrs in Milanese cem-eteries," and she notes in passing that, at Erstein, "the interred whose gravesincluded foodstuffs were identified as predominantly female" (80). However,instead of actually providing here a solidly researched and argued discussionof the issues, Effros merely concludes, in "Future Directions for Research,"that "an assessment of whether all or certain vessels appeared more frequentlyin men's or women's burials, or in adolescents' or adults' sepulchers, wouldprove very useful. These distinctions would suggest some of the possible con-notations of feasting rites and whether they were directly linked to particulargender- or age-identities" (90).-Felice Lifshitz, Florida International UniversityI Philippe Buc, The Dangers of Rituaf: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory (Princ-eton, 2001).2 See, most recently, Kate Cooper and Conrad Leyser, "The Gender of Grace: Impotence, Servitude andManliness in the Fifth-Century West," Gender and History 12 (2000), 536 - 551.3 I discuss this episode at length in Felice Lifshitz, "The Martyr, The Tomb and The Matron: Constructing the(Masculine) Past as Feminine Power Base" in Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiographyeds. Gerd Althoff, Johannes Fried and Patrick J. Geary (Cambridge, 2002), 311 - 341.Valeria Finned,The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Cas-tration in the Italian Renaissance. Durham and London: Duke UniversityPress, 2003. Pp 316. $24.95.Addressing the fraught process of becoming a man in Renaissance Italy, thisbook is an important study of the ways that cultural and literary texts worktogether to give gendered metaphors purchase on physical bodies, both maleand female. Examining medical, theological, popular, and literary accounts of"engendering," Finucci explores fears surrounding paternity, particularly thepotential of feminine bodies to disrupt fantasies of masculinity tied to repro-duction. Because Finucci uses psychoanalytic insights concerning gender andsexuality to read the construction of manly identity in a historically spe-cific moment, she shows that historicizing masculinity is a feminist criticalproject relevant to contemporary thinking about the ways that men procureand secure power in western cultures. As such, her book will be of interest toscholars in early modern, medieval, and gender studies.By focusing on gender as masquerade, Finucci emphasizes the difficultiesinvolved in becoming "manly" in Renaissance Italy, at once refusing to grantmasculinity a presumption to universal stability, while at the same timeEDexploring the consequences of this fragility for those bodies considered lessthan "manly," namely those of women and castrati. The fluidity of the physi-cal body, which required that both sex and gender be performed in unison for"manliness" to be achieved, meant that men could easily slip into effeminacyif either stylized performance or bodily substance missed its mark. The mostvisibly sure way for a man to give his manliness substance, Finucci demon-strates, was not by acting out a position of power, but rather by producingoffspring who bore the stamp of his potency. While the literary texts Finucciuses are from the high Italian Renaissance, including works by Machiavelli,Tasso, Ariosto, and Bibiena, her first two chapters give a historical account ofideas about reproduction that are equally relevant to medieval studies.The book's first chapter surveys philosophical and medical discussions toassess the effect of generative fictions on ideas of masculinity in early mod-ern Italy. In a culture that circulates stories about births without fathers ormothers, women's bestial and self-inseminations, and male pregnancies bornof hetero- and homosexual encounters, Finucci convincingly argues that theconnection between male generative function and masculine cultural poweris not guaranteed. Add to these possibilities the potential for generation fromfermentation and putrefaction and one sees what Finucci suggests is alwaysan anxious relationship between paternity and masculinity.Finucci next takes up the sexual stakes of Machiavelli's play Mandragola.While she acknowledges that as a comedy Mandragola seeks to satirize thegullible Nicia by exploiting popular associations of women's poisonouswombs with the deadly power of both the mandrake root and venomousspiders, Callimaco's use of these cultural myths to gain access to Lucrezia'sbody shows that manliness depends upon the ability to "confirrn.i.manhoodthrough offspring" (106-7). Paternity can be a masquerade performance, in-sofar as Nicia contracts to have another man engender the son who will passas his own; nevertheless, paternity and thus manliness depends upon contactwith the female body, even if that contact is represented as potentially deadly.The third chapter investigates fears concerning the influence of the maternalimagination on the child she bears, particularly as those cultural anxieties re-late to Clorinda's womanhood and whiteness in Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata.According to theories requiring parental/paternal resemblance in offspring,Clorinda is monstrous not only because she is not black like her Ethiopianparents, but also because her behavior does not correspond to expectationsof passivity for white feminine beauty. Finucci uses Tasso's representationof Clorinda's recuperation-which can only take place in the etherealizedChristian context her death provides-to investigate the ways that the ma-ternal imagination threatens to undermine paternal claims to legitimacy andpropriety through monstrous progeny.Chapter Four focuses on the embedded novella in Ariosto's Orlando fuiiosoof Astolfo and Jocondo's sexual exploits, arguing that excessive virile per-formance, especially when it is non-procreative, actually undermines men'sclaims to masculine potency. If men stake their claims to masculine authorityon physical appeal and sexual performance, like Astolfo and Jocondo they canget caught up in a cycle of excessive sexuality, which is not only barren butalso ends up being effeminizing.Finucci argues for the prosthetic construction of sex in Bibiena's La caJandria,looking at the moment before the onset of adult maturity when cross-dressingallows young men and women to explore fluid gender arrangements. Whilethe dizzying crossing of identical twins Lidio and Santilla suggests the pos-sibility that sexual organs can be changed or reordered, Finucci relates thediscourse surrounding hermaphroditism to the dangers of gender fluidity, Be-cause "to be bigendered was a threat to society" (218), the prosthetic potentialof biological sex becomes yet another means to settle in appropriate terms thegender of the androgynous player as youth gives way to adulthood.The sixth and final chapter deals with the importance of sexual organs as theyrelate to sexual performance; it does so by looking at the fascination with andsuspicion of the castrato from the late-sixteenth century. Examining the papalprohibition of marriage against castrati in 1587, Finucci suggests that the ob-ject choice of the castrato was not necessarily limited by his ability to performin hetero- or homosexual contexts. When the Church prevents castrati fromentering marriage contracts, however, it effectively reads sexuality accord-ing to generative capacity. Heterosexual sex is reiterated as procreative, andempowered masculinity is defined as reproductive.It is in this final chapter that Finucci fully explores the insights her historicistaccount offers for contemporary gender studies. By examining the historicalparticulars surrounding castration and the production of the castrato in six-teenth-century Italy, Finucci illustrates that the Freudian account of castrationanxiety reduces male genitalia to the penis, effectively shifting the indicatorof masculinity from the organ of reproduction to the organ of pleasure. Thestrength of the final chapter, Finucci's ability to show that historical construc-tions of gender identities intluence current definitions of manliness in relationto feminine bodies, is unfortunately less developed in much of the rest ofthe book. Medievalists therefore may wish that Finucci gave more space tothinking about how her Italian sources changed the ideas they adopted frommedieval discourse. Likewise, gender theorists might wish that Finucci's bookspent more time illustrating the ways that historical figurations of masculin-ity undermine gender mythologies of the present. That said, either of thesereservations are limited in scope, and arise only because the well-defined pa-rameters of Finucci's study prevent her from pursuing these lines of scholar-ship more fully. Finucci's book thus opens up work for both medievalists andfeminists, which should make it invaluable reading for the audience of MFF-Holly A. Crackel; University of Cincinnatim

Valeria Finucci, The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance. Duke University Press, 2003

https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1188&amp;context=mff

Valeria Finucci, The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance. Duke University Press, 2003

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