商品簡介
Soyer (early modern history, U. of Southampton) presents a study of how questions of gender and sexual identity were raised in early modern Spain and Portugal, particularly in the context of the Inquisition. To this end, he focuses on particular people who were tried by Inquisitors for having abnormal genitalia. These people were colloquially referred to as hermaphrodites, but it's not clear if all of them met that definition according to modern standards. The decisions being made were less scientifically rigorous, though they carried the pretension, than political and rooted in anxieties about sexual transgression. The first two chapters broadly review gender stereotypes and sexual transgression in early modern Iberia, as well as the claims about hermaphrodites. The latter four chapters are close studies of men, women, and possibly intersexed individuals from the 17th and 18th centuries, including Franscico Roca (thought to be a woman with male genitals), Father Pedro Furtado (thought to be a man with female genitals), Joseph Martins (thought to be a man with female genitals), and Sister Maria Duran (thought to be a woman with a penis). Translations are provided for most block-quotes. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
作者簡介
Francois Soyer, Ph.D. (2007), University of Cambridge, is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He is currently a lecturer in early modern history at Southampton (UK) and an Australian Research Council research fellow at the University of Adelaide (Australia).