In writing about sixteenth-century France, Lucien Febvre looked for those changes in human consciousness that explain the process of civilization--the most specific and tangible examples of men's experience, the most vivid details of their daily lives. These essays, written at the height of Febvre's powers and sensitively edited and translated by Marian Rothstein, are the most lucid, evocative, and accessible examples of his art.

In the Renaissance, the androygyne - based on sources in Genesis and Plato's Symposium, understood to be connected-was a means of expressing the full potential of humans made in the image of God. Discussing the androygyne within the context of the visual, literary, and political, this book explores the androgyne as it was understood in early modern France. More specifically, Rothstein documents the range of uses of the androgyne in the thought of poets, philosophers, courtiers, and women in positions of political power and its ultimate connection to gender construction during the European...