ABSTRACT

This volume examines and theorizes 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. The author 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 in early modern literature, the volume helps to make a larger space for queer, genderqueer, male-bodied and queer-feminine representations in our conversations about early modern gender and sexuality.

chapter |38 pages

Introduction

Passing Relations

chapter |33 pages

Doublecrossdressing Encounters

Haec Vir and Hic Mulier, The Faerie Queene, May Day, and “Robin Hood and the Bishop”

chapter |31 pages

Crossdressed Brides and the Marriage Market

A Mad World, My Master, Epicoene, and “Phylotus and Emelia”

chapter |35 pages

Crossdressing and Queer Heterosexuality

Arcadia, Urania, Isle of the Gulls, and “Sport Upon Sport”

chapter |29 pages

Crossdressing, Sex, and Gender Labor

Convent of Pleasure, Gallathea, and “The Male and Female Husband”

chapter |22 pages

Epilogue

Male-to-Female Crossdressing, Transfeminism, and Relational Gender