Masculinity, Corporality and the English Stage 1580-1635 (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780754656517)

The significance of human anatomy to the most physical of art forms, the theatre, has hitherto been an under-explored topic. Filling this gap, Christian Billing questions conventional wisdom regarding the one-sex anatomical model and uses a range of medical treatises to delineate an emergent two-sex paradigm of human biology. The impact such a model had on the staging of the human form in English professional theatre is also explored in appraisals of: (i) the homo-erotic significance of a two-sex paradigm; (ii) social and theatrical cross-dressing; (iii) the uses of theatrical androgyny; (iv) masculine corporality and the representation of assertive women; and (v) the theatrical poetics of human dissection. Billing supports cultural and scientific study with close-readings of Lyly, Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Dekker, Beaumont, Fletcher, and Ford. The book provides a sophisticated and original analysis of the early modern stage body as a discursive site in wider debates concerning sexuality and gender.

Author: Christian M. Billing
ISBN-10: 0754656519
ISBN-13: 9780754656517
Publisher: Routledge
Language: English
Published: 11/28/2008
Pages: 248
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.16lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.63d