ABSTRACT
From the 1960s, the work on the cultural constructions of madness has alerted us to its historical and gendered dimensions. In 1595 the German publication of Alcidalius’s Disputatio nova contra mulieres sparked off a controversy over women’s humanity. Greeks connected women with primitive, natural forces which male “reason” and culture leave behind in their quest for civilisation. Demonstrating the complexity of the relationship of folly and femininity in Renaissance culture this chapter attempts to question the either/or constructions of the feminist historiography of madness. It addresses the semantic and ideological multivalency of the term “folly” particularly in its application to women, considering with that the categories of unreason, femininity or female sexuality are not ahistorical or fixed but evolving through their locations in specific cultural, political and historical contexts and socio-linguistic registers. In Shakespeare’s plays too, it is men rather than women who fail to discriminate.
