Male-to-Female Crossdressing in Early Modern English Literature: Gender, Performance, and Queer Relations

ISBN-13: 9781138951211 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 196 str.

Simone Chess

Opis

This volume examines the oft-ignored phenomenon of male-to-female (MTF) crossdressing in early modern drama, prose, and poetry, inviting MTF crossdressing episodes to take a fuller place alongside instances of female-to-male crossdressing and boy actors crossdressing, which have long held the spotlight in early modern gender studies. Chess argues that MTF crossdressing episodes are especially rich sources for socially-oriented readings of queer gender that crossdressers genders are constructed and represented "in relation" to romantic partners, communities, and broader social structures like marriage, economy, and sexuality. Further, she argues that these relational representations show that the crossdresser and his/her allies often "benefit "financially, socially, and erotically from his/her queer gender presentation, a corrective to the dominant idea that queer gender has always been associated with shame, containment, and correction. By attending to these relational and beneficial representations of MTF crossdressers, the volume helps to make a larger space for queer, genderqueer, male-bodied, and queer-feminine representations in conversations about early modern gender and sexuality." "This book develops areas of inquiry in the fields of queer studies and performance studies in early modern literature by insisting that MTF crossdressing is a critical missing piece of the conversation about gender and performance in the early modern period. At the same time, the project applies contemporary trans* theory methodologies to early modern studies and is part of the ongoing work of historicizing contemporary queer and feminist studies."

O autorze

Simone Chess is an Assistant Professor of English and an affiliate of the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program at Wayne State University in Detroit. Her research interests are in Early Modern literary and cultural studies, queer studies, and gender and sexuality studies. She has published articles and book chapters on the topics of crossdressing, bathroom activism, ballads, and blindness.