ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the particular use of (cross-)dressing metaphors which is both inherent in the genre and shapes the discourse on it as the metaphorology of declamation. Costumes and stage props, masking and cosmetics, and transgressions like cross-dressing are, illustrative metaphors of literary criticism which dictate(d) the semantics; that is, the way one was/is supposed to speak of oratory in general and of the allegedly false rhetorics of declamation in particular. Such transgressions are usually displayed through the body itself, through body adornment, clothes, or other communicative and social signs like voice, gesture, and habitus. In this way, it is often doubtful whether the identity shift created in such a way is just temporal or perpetual. Gender transgressions, or transvestism in particular, are therefore seen as forms of a social or identity crisis that has to be overcome by restoring 'natural' and thus normative order.
