Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe.
Eschrich, Gabriella Scarlatta
Kathleen P. Long. Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe.
Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. Aldershot: Ashgate
Publishing Company, 2006. x + 268 pp. index. illus. bibl. $94.95. ISBN:
0-7546-5609-8.
Kathleen P. Long's exploration of the hermaphrodite in Europe
provides a rich and revealing study of this figure in the early modern
period, and presents an interdisciplinary and intertextual approach to
gender studies. Indeed, the broad variety of documents analyzed in this
book is impressively extensive: scientific and alchemical treatises,
political pamphlets, medical texts, novels, and poetry. According to Long, the hermaphrodite is an ever-changing figure that reveals all
aspects of the times in which it surfaced, mostly the unsettled decades
of the Renaissance troubled by several crises. The book's eight
chapters make a thorough account of how the very existence of the
hermaphrodite put into question the foundations of natural laws that
distinguished the two sexes and their many well-defined functions.
Long begins with Greek and Roman depictions and moves to an
analysis of sex theories found in the medical treatises of Pare, Bauhin,
and Duval, who mostly use the figure of the hermaphrodite to discuss
differences between the male and female body in the contexts of
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cultural notions of gender. While
attempting to explain and justify the hermaphrodite's monstrosity,
Bauhin blames predicaments that occurred at the moment of conception.
Duval, on the other hand, continues this discourse and considers the
hermaphrodite in the sphere of heterosexual reproduction and female
sexuality. Throughout the Renaissance, sexual ambiguity was considered a
threat to society, and therefore continued to exist at the heart of
cultural, political, medical, and literary debates. Chapter 4 studies in
depth the role of the hermaphrodite in alchemy, where it attained
increased importance. Long provides an ambitious analysis of alchemical
texts, such as Paracelsus's work, in which the hermaphrodite
becomes the symbol of conjunction and balancing of male and female. Her
discussion continues in chapter 5 with Nuysement's alchemical texts
and their gendered representation of the process of generation, which
she claims is a product of dissolution of female and male. She
furthermore moves to carefully examine Nuysement's Poeme
philosophic and its hermaphroditic entity, in which gender and power are
closely entwined. This chapter skillfully shows how the figure of the
hermaphrodite is once again associated with transgression, bordering
often with incest and cannibalism. It also convincingly suggests that
alchemical writings mirror closely the nature of the hermaphrodite as
they often offer two divergent readings.
Chapter 6 is my favorite: in "Lyric Hermaphrodite," Long
superbly examines the lyric production of the poets of Henri III of
Valois, in which Petrarchism commingles with religious conflicts and
horrors. The king and his mignons were often portrayed as a mix of
hermaphrodite, androgyne, transvestite, and bisexual, thereby blending
even more gender boundaries, and fueling ambiguity in the political,
cultural, and literary domains of his reign. Theodore Agrippa
d'Aubigne, Philippe Desportes, Hesteau de Nuysement, and other
poets masterfully respond to the baroque spirit of these years by
weaving in their verses multilayered ambiguities of gender, sex, body,
as well as difference as a poetic category. Sexual difference in
particular is at once celebrated and threatened in court poetry,
because, as Long often points out throughout her book, this paradox
epitomized and mimicked the many fears in early modern Europe and in
France in particular. Chapter 7 concentrates on the various portrayals
of Henri III and his mignons because of their ambiguous sexual
orientation and their desire to appear female. In poetry and political
pamphlets, Henri III's lack of a well-defined sexuality was
associated with the end of sixteenth-century social disorder: the
reversal of gender roles threatened social harmony; therefore, the
hermaphrodite became once again a horrific monster. Long's
persuasive accounts of the many, yet circular and self-generating, ways
in which the hermaphrodite was scrutinized and portrayed throughout the
Renaissance concludes with a solid interpretation of the novel
Description de l'Isle des Hermaphrodites by Thomas Artus. This
impressive text raises many questions of sexuality, language, social
laws, and norms, as well as gender roles.
Remarkably, Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe demonstrates how
the figure of the hermaphrodite personified the key issues at the heart
of sixteenth-century culture, but also at the heart of gender studies
today. Indeed, the very debates that concerned Renaissance epistemology
are central to our own debates across disciplines. Long admiringly
proves her deep knowledge and understanding of this debate by providing
a helpful framework and by offering a significant contribution to gender
studies in ways that transcend disciplines and culture.
GABRIELLA SCARLATTA ESCHRICH
University of Michigan-Dearborn