Affecting Manhood: Masculinity, Effeminacy, and the Fop Figure in Early Modern English Drama

Landis, Jessica

Publication:
Affecting Manhood: Masculinity, Effeminacy, and the Fop Figure in Early Modern English Drama

dc.contributor.advisor	Adam Zucker
dc.contributor.advisor	Jane Degenhardt
dc.contributor.advisor	Harley Erdman
dc.contributor.author	Landis, Jessica
dc.contributor.department	University of Massachusetts Amherst
dc.date	2023-09-23T12:44:54.000
dc.date.accessioned	2024-04-26T16:09:03Z
dc.date.available	2024-04-26T16:09:03Z
dc.date.submitted	September
dc.date.submitted	2015
dc.description.abstract	This project identifies and analyzes the fop figure in early modern English drama and treats the figure as a vehicle that reveals the instability of conceptions of masculinity in the period. This project establishes a theatrical history of the character type. Although the fop did not emerge on the English stage as a stock character until late in the seventeenth century, antecedents and proto-fops appear across dramatic genres beginning in the late 1580s. Identifying these characters and deciphering their functions in plot and character development reveals, in part, how cultural anxieties about masculine codes of conduct were manifested. The project examines the spaces foppish characters occupied on stage between 1587 and 1615, specifically, the court, the battlefield, the academy, and the city. It argues that a man risks becoming a fop if he fails to adhere to codes that governed masculine conduct in these spaces. Affecting Manhood argues that foppishness was quite prevalent on the early modern English stage, showing up in the works of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Middleton, Chapman, Marston, Peele, and Fletcher among others. Chapter One traces courtier fops in that appear in staged court spaces as figures that reveal cracks in the social and political facade of the court as an institution. Chapter Two focuses on soldier fops and posits that excessiveness, an intrinsic characteristic of early modern fops, is also a major tenet of martial forms of masculinity, and so blurs the line between successful soldier and an effeminate fop. Chapter Three looks at the tradition of scholar fops within staged academies of learning to show the link between homosociality, homoeroticism, and effeminacy. Chapter Four turns to urban young men and the fops among them, claiming that foppishness and its accompanying effeminacies are constructed via the excessive use of particularly urban materials, such as clothing and young boys. Taken together, these specific fop figures become a critical lens for examining the shifting ideas about power and gender in early modern England.
dc.description.degree	Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
dc.description.department	English
dc.identifier.doi	https://doi.org/10.7275/7349760.0
dc.identifier.orcid	N/A
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14394/19665
dc.relation.url	https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1461&context=dissertations_2&unstamped=1
dc.source.status	published
dc.subject	Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory
dc.subject	Literature in English, British Isles
dc.subject	Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
dc.title	Affecting Manhood: Masculinity, Effeminacy, and the Fop Figure in Early Modern English Drama
dc.type	openaccess
dc.type	article
dc.type	dissertation
digcom.contributor.author	isAuthorOfPublication\|email:jesslandis0303@gmail.com\|institution:University of Massachusetts Amherst\|Landis, Jessica
digcom.identifier	dissertations_2/450
digcom.identifier.contextkey	7349760
digcom.identifier.submissionpath	dissertations_2/450
dspace.entity.type	Publication