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Valeria Finucci. The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance. Durham & London: Duke UP, 2003. Pp 305.
What makes a man manly? Is it that he possesses a penis? Is it his rough, sometimes insensitive demeanor? Is it his object choice? Is it perhaps the unadorned, rugged manner with which he presents himself to the world? In the twentieth century, perceptions of masculinity were greatly informed by Sigmund Freud's focus on (or perhaps obsession with) the phallus, that organ of the human body which, according to Freud's theories, guarantees a male power. In her innovative study The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance, Valeria Finucci sustains that in the past (specifically, in Early Modern Italy) manliness required not just what we would now consider virile characteristics associated with the possession of a penis, but also and more specifically a man's visualization of that power through the procreation and generation of a new life. In support of her thesis, Finucci brings together material from numerous literary sources such as plays, novellas, chivalric romances, and poems, since "literature, being a reflection of the culture to which it belongs, has always displayed an interest in sexuality and organization of gendered identities" (2). Furthermore, she weaves into her analysis citations from conduct manuals, medical treatises, theological pronouncements, and legal and juridical documents.
Finucci begins by examining theories of engendering in the Renaissance. She traces Early Modern medical ideas on generation from the Hippocratic corpus to the medieval interpretations of Aristotle (especially the medical interpretations by Avicenna), and to Galen of Pergamum, who united Hippocratic and Aristotelian traditions. For Aristotle, a woman's role in engendering was completely passive; her body was a vessel that received the male seed, cultivated it until it was fully developed, and expelled it in the form of a child. Thus, a woman provided only a matrix in which life was incubated, whereas a man gave everything else to his offspring. The Hippocratics, unlike Aristotle, believed that women held an active role in the generation of life, for both men and women produced sperm; however, because of her relative lack of body heat, a woman's sperm was weaker than a man's. Galen's ideas were similar to those of...