Overview

How were male bodies viewed before the Enlightenment? And what does this reveal about attitudes towards sex and gender in premodern Europe? This richly textured cultural history investigates the characterization of the sex of adult male bodies from ancient Greece to the seventeenth century. Before the modern focus on the phallic, penetrative qualities of male anatomy, Patricia Simons finds that men's bodies were considered in terms of their active physiological characteristics, in relation to semen, testicles and what was considered innately masculine heat. Re-orienting attention from an anatomical to a physiological focus, and from fertility to pleasure, Simons argues that women's sexual agency was perceived in terms of active reception of the valuable male seed. This provocative, compelling study draws on visual, material and textual evidence to elucidate a broad range of material, from medical learning, high art and literary metaphors to obscene badges, codpieces and pictorial or oral jokes.

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9781107656871

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Reviews

'This is a remarkable book, based on an extraordinary depth of scholarship. Patricia Simons provides a detailed unpicking of the sexual codes of Renaissance Europe, so that one can finally understand the innuendo. No-one else has her detailed knowledge, and she has it for language, image and material object - this is real cultural history in the round. And her fundamental argument is completely original, and will change how we think about the period. The book is a treat to read, never jargonistic and always witty.' Lyndal Roper, University of Oxford 'With this book Patricia Simons offers a characteristically original, learned, and passionate critique of some of the ruling assumptions of gender studies, above all as these have operated in the study of early modern culture. Artifacts and images are called upon to serve a set of arguments grounded in medical literature, trial reports concerning medical-juridical anomalies such as hermaphrodites, popular and elite literatures, jokes, pastimes and folklore. The breadth of erudition is impressive in the extreme.' Stephen Campbell, Johns Hopkins University 'This exuberant new history of the masculine body combines art history, material culture, literature and sexuality. Patricia Simons has it all - encyclopedic knowledge, phenomenal interpretations, subtle inferences from the medical archive, and the keenest observation of visual nuance.' James Grantham Turner, University of California, Berkeley 'In this excellent study, Patricia Simons finally makes comprehensible the conceptual framework that shaped understandings and experiences of the body that, she argues, have been largely obscured by both psychoanalytic theory and cultural history ... Based on diverse sources from medical to popular literature and encompassing a wide range of visual and material culture, the analysis is alert to the interrelationship between representation and metaphor on the one hand and action and experience on the other, which affords mutual agency to the cultural and corporeal.' Alexandra Shepard, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 'A thought-provoking and important study of the premodern European perceptions of the sexed (male) body that provides critical insights on sex and gender not only for the scholars of early modernity but for anyone concerned with bodies and gender, past or present.' Council for European Studies

'This is a remarkable book, based on an extraordinary depth of scholarship. Patricia Simons provides a detailed unpicking of the sexual codes of Renaissance Europe, so that one can finally understand the innuendo. No-one else has her detailed knowledge, and she has it for language, image and material object - this is real cultural history in the round. And her fundamental argument is completely original, and will change how we think about the period. The book is a treat to read, never jargonistic and always witty.' Lyndal Roper, University of Oxford 'With this book Patricia Simons offers a characteristically original, learned, and passionate critique of some of the ruling assumptions of gender studies, above all as these have operated in the study of early modern culture. Artifacts and images are called upon to serve a set of arguments grounded in medical literature, trial reports concerning medical-juridical anomalies such as hermaphrodites, popular and elite literatures, jokes, pastimes and folklore. The breadth of erudition is impressive in the extreme.' Stephen Campbell, Johns Hopkins University 'This exuberant new history of the masculine body combines art history, material culture, literature and sexuality. Patricia Simons has it all - encyclopedic knowledge, phenomenal interpretations, subtle inferences from the medical archive, and the keenest observation of visual nuance.' James Grantham Turner, University of California, Berkeley 'In this excellent study, Patricia Simons finally makes comprehensible the conceptual framework that shaped understandings and experiences of the body that, she argues, have been largely obscured by both psychoanalytic theory and cultural history ... Based on diverse sources from medical to popular literature and encompassing a wide range of visual and material culture, the analysis is alert to the interrelationship between representation and metaphor on the one hand and action and experience on the other, which affords mutual agency to the cultural and corporeal.' Alexandra Shepard, Bulletin of the History of Medicine

Review of the hardback: 'This is a remarkable book, based on an extraordinary depth of scholarship. Patricia Simons provides a detailed unpicking of the sexual codes of Renaissance Europe, so that one can finally understand the innuendo. No-one else has her detailed knowledge, and she has it for language, image and material object - this is real cultural history in the round. And her fundamental argument is completely original, and will change how we think about the period. The book is a treat to read, never jargonistic and always witty.' Lyndal Roper, University of Oxford Review of the hardback: 'With this book Patricia Simons offers a characteristically original, learned, and passionate critique of some of the ruling assumptions of gender studies, above all as these have operated in the study of early modern culture. Artifacts and images are called upon to serve a set of arguments grounded in medical literature, trial reports concerning medical-juridical anomalies such as hermaphrodites, popular and elite literatures, jokes, pastimes and folklore. The breadth of erudition is impressive in the extreme.' Stephen Campbell, Johns Hopkins University Review of the hardback: 'This exuberant new history of the masculine body combines art history, material culture, literature and sexuality. Patricia Simons has it all - encyclopedic knowledge, phenomenal interpretations, subtle inferences from the medical archive, and the keenest observation of visual nuance.' James Grantham Turner, University of California, Berkeley

Author Information

Patricia Simons is Associate Professor, History of Art, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has curated several exhibitions including 'Seeing is Healing? The Visual Arts of Medicine', in 2000, and her previous publications include Patronage, Art and Society in Renaissance Italy (co-editor, 1987).

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