High Anxiety: Masculinity in Crisis in Early Modern France (review)

Book Reviews and nearby areas (1830-1900). Taking the collection away from France altogether, Robert Aldrich reiterates others' observations on the discursive collaboration between colonialism and the construction of heteronormativity. Though this collection contains five essays dealing with female same-sex desire, redressing the greater invisibility of lesbianism in French history will require much further research. Jarrod Hayes University of Michigan Kathleen Perry Long, ed. High Anxiety: Masculinity in Crisis in Early Modern France. Kirksville, Missouri: Truman State University Press, 2002 (Sixteenth-Century Essays and Studies , vol. 59). Pp. xvii and 238. $34.95 soft cover. From its opening pages, this volume of essays combines philological knowledge of early modern France with convincing applications of contemporary critical theory to (mainly) literary texts. As Kathleen Perry Long states in her excellent introduction, the goal of the volume is to examine "the abstraction known as masculinity"and "its problematic hold on culture" (ix), particularly in the context of early modem France. The essays in the volume concentrate on male gender roles that were "in crisis" as a consequence of numerous historical and literary developments , including the increasing importance of women's voices in literature, the rise of the bourgeoisie and its challenge to patriarchal aristocracy, the Protestant Reformation and the concomitant undermining of religious (and hence social) hierarchies, and new medical conceptions of the body as they related to representations of royal masculinity. Each of the essays sheds important light on fundamental aspects of masculinity's definition during this crucial period of French history . From Cathy Yandell's opening consideration of Louise Labé's "transgressive" transformation of the male and solipsistic characteristics of Renaissance lyric poetry, to Jeff Persels' reading of Gargantua's braguette as Rabelais's neurotic version of the blason du corps masculin, to Kirk Read's examination of the startling figure of the maternal male in Ronsard, to Stephen Murphy's dazzling description of a Latin pun (testes means both "witness" and "testicles," inviting plays on the idea of castration) that Ronsard transposed to French, to Kathleen Perry Long's reading of hermaphrodites in Jacques Duval's treatise on the need for male control of childbirth, this volume provides an embarassment of riches. From the early 16th century to the end of the 17th, the essays focus on a wide range of objects, from sonnets and essays (Tom Conley's delineation of the gendered imaginary space of "Sur des vers de Virgile" is masterful) to comedies about scatology, dirty jokes, memoirs on transvestism, and fairy tales about porcine princes who become handsome kings. Catherine Randall's final essay provides a more general study of diverse projections of threatened masculinity in Calvinist and Catholic theology and in sacred iconography from the period. Throughout these readings, the authors define masculinity in a number of ways: as an anxious subjective attitude with respect to a feared/longed for female object of desire; as a relation to the proper or improper functioning of the male body's private parts; as a "reaction-formation" provoked by the "castration complex"; as a phantasmic projection of the body politic; as a vestimentary or verbal performance that is somewhat independent of the body. The volume thus incorporates some of today's most prevalent critical theories (psychoanalysis , performance studies, cultural materialism, feminism in its diverse varieties) in readings that demonstrate remarkable erudition. As such, it accomplishes a satisfying synthesis of philology and theory that should be a valuable addition to any scholar's library. David LaGuardia Dartmouth College Vol. XLIII, No. 3 101 ...