Title: Erotic beasts and social monsters
First published: 1995
Description: The voluminous contemporary critical work on English Renaissance androgyny and transvestism debates has not fully uncovered the ancient Greek and Roman roots of the gender controversy. Erotic Beasts and Social Monsters argues that the variant Renaissance views on the androgyne's symbolism are, in fact, best understood with reference to classical representations of the double-sexed or gender-baffled figure, and with the classical merging of that figure with images of beasts and monsters.

Grace Tiffany's discussion of ancient beast-androgynes draws on satire as well as myth, citing Archilochus alongside Homer, Aristophanes with Euripides, and Juvenal next to Ovid and Apuleius. She thus illuminates a gender dispute as old as Western culture itself.
Subjects: Androgyny (Psychology) in literature, Comic, The, in literature, Criticism and interpretation, Drama, English drama, Hermaphroditism in literature, History, History and criticism, Knowledge, Psychological aspects, Psychological aspects of Drama, Psychology, Sex (Psychology) in literature, Theater, Androgynie (Psychologie), Intersexuality in literature, Komödie, Early modern and Elizabethan, Shakespeare, william, 1564-1616, criticism and interpretation, Jonson, ben, 1573-1637, language, English drama, history and criticism, early modern and elizabethan, 1500-1600, Theater, great britain, history
Places: England, London
People: Ben Jonson (1573?-1637), William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Time periods: 17th century, Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600
LC classification: PR3069.A425 T54 1995