Knightly Masculinity, Court Games and Material Culture in Late-medieval Portugal: The Case of Constable Afonso (c.1480–1504)

This article explores the ways in which gender was used in order to transform an exiled and uneducated illegitimate child into a prince. Our study revolves around a member of the royal family, Afonso (c.1480–1504), who was brought up in hiding by peasants and who later, as a teenager, was reincorporated into the court. We argue that the keys to this process of rehabilitation were, on one hand, family politics centred around different configurations and on the other, his introduction into a court environment marked by the ideals of chivalry. Within this dynamic, material culture played a key role, because it gave the prince all the visual attributes of his new status, as well as allowing him the means to create a new self. We shall briefly introduce Afonso and his family context in order to give an insight into his life within changing political and dynastic contexts. Then, we will analyse the expression of manhood in the Portuguese court, using the spectacles at the court as a basis for observation, thus relating gender to material culture in a courtly environment.

Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2F1468-0424.12214

Josephine  Hoegaerts, Masculinity and Nationhood, 1830–1910: Constructions of Identity and Citizenship in Belgium (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014), pp. xii + 242. 978-1-137-39199-5 (hb).

Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2F1468-0424.12227

Beyond ‘Crisis’ in Understanding Gender Transformation

Since the late 1980s, historians have described certain eras as marked by ‘crisis’ in the production of gender norms. At the outset, the concept of ‘gender crisis’ proved useful for understanding changes in normative cultural systems. The rhetorical trope of crisis distinguished key turning points in the construction of gender and helped to shape a coherent narrative centred on moments of breakdown and reconstruction. Unfortunately, however, the concept of ‘gender crisis’ has now outlived its usefulness; it has lost its analytic purchase. This article reviews the notion in modern, American and European historiography, then critiques its usefulness as an analytic concept. ‘Gender crisis’ has been overworked to the point of semantic collapse. It has been so reified as to foreshorten analysis, and it conceptualises masculinity as a fixed set of essentialised norms. Finally, ‘gender crisis’ describes subjectivity and its relation to normative systems in overly binary and mechanistic terms. Using the case study of postwar French masculinity, the author proposes the alternative concept of ‘gender damage’ as a way to understand periods of transformation in gender. The term ‘gender damage’ moves beyond a mechanistic notion of interaction with normative systems in order to incorporate such emotions as frustration, humiliation and confusion in our thinking of human subjectivity. In addition, the term forces us to specify exactly which gender norms are being reconfigured in some way. ‘Damage’ is by nature specific and local because it does not totalise catastrophe in the same way as does ‘crisis’.

Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2F1468-0424.12212

Marilyn  Morris, Sex, Money & Personal Character in Eighteenth-Century British Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), pp. xiv + 257. ISBN 978-0-300-20845-0 (hb).

Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2F1468-0424.12233

Sarah B.  Rodriguez, Female Circumcision and Clitoridectomy in the United States: A History of Medical Treatment (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2014), pp. ix + 280. ISBN: 978-1-58046-498-7 (hb).

Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2F1468-0424.12229

BIOGRAPHIES

Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2F1468-0424.12236

ABSTRACTS

Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2F1468-0424.12204

Editorial

Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2F1468-0424.12205

Blood, Contract and Intimacy: History and Practice with Leonore Davidoff

Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2F1468-0424.12207

Degrading the Male Body: Manhood and Conflict in the High-medieval Low Countries

Recent studies of medieval manhood have prompted scholars to revisit the established research field of medieval conflict and have directed attention towards the role of gendered violence in (elite) political culture. However, symbolic impermanent defamations of the male body proper remain to be discussed. Drawing from the rich narrative sources from the high-medieval Low Countries, this article aims in particular at remedying this blind spot by scrutinising specific forms of gendered violence, such as the enforced shearing of an elite man's beard or a public mocking of his chivalric manly fortitude. It also presents the argument that these practices, when used in contexts of conflict and punishment, not only tapped into the authority of ancient traditions and rituals but rather might have served clear contemporary interests relating to the pacification of society. Such tactics would have helped to avoid feud in a world in which aristocratic manly honour regularly seemed to demand it, especially in a time when centralised and consolidated structures for conflict management were still lacking and a religiously inspired peace ideal influenced policy-making as well as day-to-day social dynamics.

Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2F1468-0424.12213