Intertextual Masculinity in French Renaissance Literature - 9781138245495

Taylor & Francis

Intertextual Masculinity in French Renaissance Literature is an in-depth analysis of normative masculinity in a specific corpus from pre-modern Europe: narrative literature devoted to the subject of adultery and cuckoldry. Reading such historical documents as early modern legal texts, penance manuals, and criminal records in relation to the Cent nouvelles nouvelles and works by Rabelais and Brant\u00C3\u00B4me, LaGuardia formulates a definition of masculinity in a specific historical context. > Intertextual Masculinity in French Renaissance Literature is an in-depth analysis of normative masculinity in a specific corpus from pre-modern Europe: narrative literature devoted to the subject of adultery and cuckoldry. The text begins with a set of general questions that serve as a conceptual framework for the literary analyses that follow: why were early modern readers so fascinated by the figure of the cuckold? What was his relation to the real world of sexual behavior and gender relae