Valeria Finucci

Kevin Brownlee

This collection explores the construction of genealogies both in the biological sense of procreation and in the metaphorical sense of heritage and cultural patrimony.

Tropes of Reproduction in Literature and History from Antiquity through Early Modern Europe

Generation and Degeneration

Massimo Ciavolella

Megan Tomlinson

The essays examine how the study of facial features or expressions as indicative of character or ethnicity, has evolved from the crossroad of magic, religion and primitive medicine to present-day cultural concern for wellness and beauty. In this context, the discoveries of cranio-facial neurophysiology and psychology and the practice of cosmetic and reconstructive surgery have a centuries-old relationship with physiognomy. As the study of outward appearances evolved from its classical roots and self-representations through 18th- and 19th-century adaptations in fiction and travelogues, it gradually became a scientific discipline. Along the way, physiognomy was associated with phrenology and craniology and promoted eugenic policies. Tainted with racial bigotry and biological determinism, it was trapped within questions of delinquency, monstrosity and posthumanism. Throughout its history, physiognomy played both positive and negative roles in the evolution of significant aspects of the socio-cultural order in the West that merit update and in-depth study. The contributions follow a chronological and intertwining sequence to encompass physiognomic expressions in art, literature, spirituality, science, philosophy and cultural studies.

Physiognomy at the Crossroad of Magic, Science, and the Arts

Rinaldo F. Canalis †

Medical Humanities may be broadly conceptualized as a discipline wherein medicine and its specialties intersect with those of the humanities and social sciences. As such it is a hybrid area of study where the impact of disease and healing science on culture is assessed and expressed in the particular language of the disciplines concerned with the human experience. However, as much as at first sight this definition appears to be clear, it does not reflect how the interaction of medicine with the humanities has evolved to become a separate field of study. In this publication we have explored, through the analysis of a group of selected multidisciplinary essays, the dynamics of this process. The essays predominantly address the interaction of literature, philosophy, art, art history, ethics, and education with medicine and its specialties from the classical period to the present. Particular attention has been given to the Medieval, Early Modern, and Enlightenment periods. To avoid a rigid compartmentalization of the book based on individual fields of study we opted for a fluid division into multidisciplinary sections, reflective of the complex interactions of the included works with medicine.

Perspectives from the Arts and the Social Sciences

Rethinking Medical Humanities

The Manly Masquerade unravels the complex ways men were defined as men in Renaissance Italy through readings of a vast array of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century evidence: medical and travel literature; theology; law; myth; conduct books; and plays, chivalric romances, and novellas by authors including Machiavelli, Tasso, and Ariosto. Valeria Finucci shows how ideas of masculinity were formed in the midst of acute anxiety about paternity by highlighting the beliefs—widely held at the time—that conception could occur without a paternal imprimatur or through a woman’s encounter with an animal, or even that a pregnant woman’s imagination could erase the father’s "signature" from the fetus. Against these visions of reproduction gone awry, Finucci looks at how concepts of masculinity were tied to issues of paternity through social standing, legal matters, and inheritance practices. Highlighting the fissures running through Italian Renaissance ideas of manliness, Finucci describes how, alongside pervasive images of the virile, sexually active man, early modern Italian culture recognized the existence of hermaphrodites and started to experiment with a new kind of sexuality by manufacturing a non-man: the castrato. Following the creation of castrati, the Church forbade the marriage of all non-procreative men, and, in this move, Finucci identifies a powerful legitimation of the view that what makes men is not the possession of male organs or the ability to have sex, but the capability to father. Through analysis, anecdote, and rich cultural description, The Manly Masquerade exposes the "real" early modern man: the paterfamilias.

Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance

The Manly Masquerade

Maurizio Rippa Bonati

Mores Italiae 1575

Edited collection discusses the first historically important debate on what constitutes modern literature, which focused on two 16th century works: ORLANDO FURIOSO and GERUSALEMME LIBERATA.

Ariosto and Tasso

Renaissance Transactions

"The Lady Vanishes focuses on the representation of women in two key works of the Italian Renaissance: Baldassarre Castiglione's treatise Il libro del cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier) and Ludovico Ariosto's chivalric romance Orlando Furioso. Using feminist, deconstructive, and psychoanalytical arguments, the author investigates power relations and the construction of women's subjectivities in sixteenth-century debates on women and popular narratives." "The book examines the construction of women in different modes: woman as exemplary model and as ridiculed object; woman as narcissistically self-centered and as masochistically altruistic; woman as subject of desire and as object of desire; woman as ambiguously gendered and as radical spectacle of femininity. Because they offer an array of characters ranging from masculine women to feminized men and experiment with many forms of transgressive desire, Castiglione and Ariosto provide the perfect arena for problematizing the Italian Renaissance discourses on gender and sexual difference, on the production of pleasure and theories of selfhood, and on the body and modes of spectatorship." "The author argues that women are indispensable to Castiglione's conversation on the courtier and the court lady not because, as is often contended, he was sympathetic toward women, but because he found women useful for their central role in the male construction of men's own image. As for Ariosto, he resolves his narrative by subsuming women to culture and society, thus sealing out disorder. Although at times portraying female rebellion and resentment as empowering, in the end he punishes women displaying these qualities by banishing them from the text. In contrast, he celebrates the acquiescent woman in the figure of the lady warrior Bradamante, who, upon resuming a properly feminine role, becomes the progenitrix of a dynasty." "The Italian Renaissance discourse on women cast them in both assertive and docile roles. In the end, however, they were restrained or expelled; their society could envision a freer order for men but not for women."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Subjectivity and Representation in Castiglione and Ariosto

The Lady Vanishes

Professor of Italian Studies and Theater Studies Valeria Finucci

DIVAnalyzes how the body was constructed and politicized in early modern Italy by exploring literary discourses of the period - plays, novellas, travel journals, poems, etc./div

Using four notorious moments in the life of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua, Valeria Finucci explores changing early modern concepts of sexuality, reproduction, beauty, and aging. She deftly marries salacious tales with historical analysis to tell a broader story of Italian Renaissance cultural adjustments and obsessions.

Valeria Finucci

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