Generation and Degeneration

by Finucci, Valeria; Brownlee, Kevin; Clark, Elizabeth A. (CON); Martin, Dale B. (CON)

• ISBN13: 9780822326441
• ISBN10: 0822326442
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-05-01
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

This distinctive collection explores the construction of genealogies-in both the biological sense of procreation and the metaphorical sense of heritage and cultural patrimony. Focusing specifically on the discourses that inform such genealogies,Generation and Degenerationmoves from Greco-Roman times to the recent past to retrace generational fantasies and discords in a variety of related contexts, from the medical to the theological, and from the literary to the historical. The discourses on reproduction, biology, degeneration, legacy, and lineage that this book broaches not only bring to the forefront concepts of sexual identity and gender politics but also show how they were culturally constructed and reconstructed through the centuries by medicine, philosophy, the visual arts, law, religion, and literature. The contributors reflect on a wide range of topics-from what makes men "manly" to the identity of Christrs"s father, from what kinds of erotic practices went on among women in sixteenth-century seraglios to how menrs"s hemorrhoids can be variously labeled. Essays scrutinize stories of menstruating males and early writings on the presumed inferiority of female bodily functions. Others investigate a psychomorphology of the clitoris that challenges Freudrs"s account of lesbianism as an infantile stage of sexual development and such topics as the geographical origins of medicine and the materialization of genealogy in the presence of Renaissance theatrical ghosts. This collection will engage those in English, comparative, Italian, Spanish, and French studies, as well as in history, history of medicine, and ancient and early modern religious studies.Contributors.Kevin Brownlee, Marina Scordilis Brownlee, Elizabeth Clark, Valeria Finucci, Dale Martin, Gianna Pomata, Maureen Quilligan, Nancy Siraisi, Peter Stallybrass,Valerie Traub

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction Genealogical Pleasures, Genealogical Disruptions	1	(16)
Valeria Finucci
Theories of Reproduction
Generation, Degeneration, Regeneration: Original Sin and the Conception of Jesus in the Polemic between Augustine and Julian of Eclanum	17	(24)
Elizabeth A. Clark
Maternal Imagination and Monstrous Birth: Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata	41	(40)
Valeria Finucci
Boundaries of Sex and Gender
Contradictions of Masculinity: Ascetic Inseminators and Menstruating Men in Greco-Roman Culture	81	(28)
Dale B. Martin
Menstruating Men: Similarity and Difference of the Sexes in Early Modern Medicine	109	(44)
Gianna Pomata
The Psychomorphology of the Clitoris, or, The Reemergence of the Tribade in English Culture	153	(36)
Valerie Traub
Female Genealogies
Genealogies in Crisis: Maria de Zayas in Seventeenth-Century Spain	189	(20)
Marina Scordilis Brownlee
Incest and Agency: The Case of Elizabeth I	209	(26)
Maureen Quilligan
The Politics of Inheritance
In Search of the Origins of Medicine: Egyptian Wisdom and Some Renaissance Physicians	235	(27)
Nancy G. Siraisi
The Conflicted Genealogy of Cultural Authority: Italian Responses to French Cultural Dominance in Il Tesoretto, Il Fiore, and La Commedia	262	(25)
Kevin Brownlee
Hauntings: The Materiality of Memory on the Renaissance Stage	287	(30)
Peter Stallybrass
Index	317