The sex of men in premodern Europe
Subtitle: a cultural history
By: Patricia Simons
Series: Cambridge social and cultural histories
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 344
ISBN-13: 9781107004917
Subjects: Sexual behavior; Social aspects; Men; HISTORY / Europe / General; Male Generative organs; Sex role; Symbolic aspects; Human body; Physiology; History
Description: "How were male bodies viewed before the Enlightenment? And what does this reveal about attitudes towards sex and gender in premodern Europe? This richly textured cultural history investigates the characterization of the sex of adult male bodies from ancient Greece to the seventeenth century. Before the modern focus on the phallic, penetrative qualities of male anatomy, Patricia Simons finds that men's bodies were considered in terms of their active physiological characteristics, in relation to semen, testicles and what was considered innately masculine heat. Re-orienting attention from an anatomical to a physiological focus, and from fertility to pleasure, Simons argues that women's sexual agency was perceived in terms of active reception of the valuable male seed. This provocative, compelling study draws on visual, material and textual evidence to elucidate a broad range of material, from medical learning, high art and literary metaphors to obscene badges, codpieces and pictorial or oral jokes"--

"While testicles were key signs of the male body and the penis was essential for emission, those markers had to work in conjunction with performative cues, such as standing erect while urinating, growing beards and discharging a certain kind of semen. Some of the most important behavioural signs of the gender of masculinity were thus tied to the biologically sexed male body, and the latter is the focus here. Mutually constitutive, gender and sex were brought into being by anatomy and physiology, and also by actions, as well as being construed through images and words. The Welsh schoolmaster John Owen (d. 1622) neatly encapsulated logocentric virility in his epigram: "God himself is the Word; he made all things with a word. / We men make words; we too are words." Masculinity was an inter-related and variable mix of three main factors: genital signs, somatic deeds (like the mode of pissing), and behavioural indicators (such as choice of dress, and degree of aggressiveness). Case studies examined in this chapter demonstrate the range but not the instability of early modern parameters within which maleness was designated and enacted"--
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Introduction; Part I. Witnessing Men's Bodies: Paradigms Old and New: 1. How to be a man in early modern Europe; 2. The phallus: history and humour; 3. Material culture in late medieval and early modern Europe; Part II. Projecting Male Sex: Models and Metaphors: 4. Physiology and anatomy; 5. Value and expenditure; 6. Pleasure and the unequal two-seed theory; 7. Fertility and beyond; 8. Implements in action; Conclusion.