Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe

Front Cover
Psychology Press, 2000 - Design - 201 pages
In this book, the author explores medieval society's fascination with the cross-dressed woman, examining a wide variety of religious, literary, and historical sources that recordedinterpretations of sartorial attempts to overcome gender hierarchy and also illustrate, mainly through the device of inversion, a remarkabley sustained desire to examine an reexamine the nature of social gender identities. Included in the study are investigations of the symbolism underlying the lives of popular transvestite saints; the confluence of hagiography and biography in the historical case of Hildegund von Schonau; the juridical and theological arguments for and against the transvestism of Jeanne d'Arc; the legend of the female pope; the phenomenon of the abandoned wife in male disguise; and the characterization of female protagonists in courtly romance who experience a crisis of sexual identity.
 

Contents

CROSS DRESSING
13
THE LIVES AND DEATH OF HILDEGUND VON SCHÖNAU
33
THE CASE OF JEANNE DARC
49
THE FEMALE POPE AND THE SIN OF MALE DISGUISE
69
GENDER INVERSION
83
CROSS DRESSING AND SEXUALITY
105
Hagiographic Appendix
131
Bibliography
177
Index
193
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