Masculinity, Corporality And The English Stage 1580–1635

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
• | Publisher: Routledge
• | Publication Date: Dec 19, 2018
• | Number of Pages: 248 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1138376027
• | ISBN-13: 9781138376021