Premodern Masculinities in Transition

Sheds new light on how masculinity was understood, lived, performed and viewed during a period of huge change.

Premodern masculinity was multivalent and dynamic, a series of intersecting, conflicting, and mutating identities that nevertheless were distinct and recognizable to people and their societies. The articles collected here examine a variety of means by which masculinity was constructed, deconstructed, and transformed across time, geographies, and cultures. Articles range across the twelfth to seventeenth century, from western Europe to the Volga-Ural region, from the Christian west to the Muslim east, from Ottomans to Mongols and Persians, from Baudri of Bourgueil to Blaise de Monluc; while topics include the chivalric hero, the effeminate man, beards, and spurs, represented variously in literature, historical documents, and art. Finally, in that period of great transformation that is the sixteenth century, they show how masculinity moved away from the traditional and recognizable to become something different and distinct from its premodern expressions.

List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

Introduction
Jacqueline Murray

Shifting Masculinities
1. Work, Writing, and Elite Masculinity in the Lyrics of Baudri of Bourgeuil
Jonathan M. Newman
2. Masculinity as Competence
Thomas V. Cohen
3. The Many Faces of Qahramān: A Medieval Persianate Romance as a Window on Mongol and Muslim Masculinities in the Volga-Ural Region (1400s-1700s)
Danielle Ross

Fluid Masculinities
4. Marked Differences: Beards in Renaissance Europe
Patricia Simons
5. Spurs and Negotiations of Masculinity in Early Modern England
Hilary Doda
6. Mars Asleep: Discarded Swords in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art
Martha Hollander

Transforming Masculinities
7. Military Masculinities inLa Chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin
Sarah Wilk
8. From the Knightly Bayard to Captain Monluc: Representations of Masculinity in Sixteenth-Century French Military Literature
Benjamin Lukas
9. The Effeminate Man and the Rhetoric of Anxious Masculinity: Anton Francesco Doni and Scipione Ammirato
Gerry Milligan


Index