Product Description

This unique and cutting edge book looks at the West's fascination with, and misunderstanding of, castrated males. Gary Taylor takes in the sweep of Western thought on 'the operation', focusing on three key periods: the Early Church, one of whose Fathers, Origen, supposedly castrated himself the Early Modern, when castration was actually depicted on stage by Thomas Middleton the twenieth century, where, Taylor argues, Freud got it wrong.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1009549 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Review
'Gary Taylor... explores this forbidden topic with sharp erudition.' - Philip Howard, The Times, January 2001

From the Back Cover
Stone Age man invented it, the Sumerians exalted it, the Christians banned it, and Freud got it wrong. Over the last century, castration has meant loss of manhood. But at earlier points in Western history, Gary Taylor argues, it was a mark of power and divinity.
Castration is a lively and detailed history of the meaning, function, and act of castration from its place in the early Church -- where Augustine and the Fathers laid the basic philosophic concepts of sexuality and chastity -- to its secular reinvention in the Renaissance as a spiritualized form of masculinity and its twentieth-century position at the core of psychoanalytic theory.
With wit and insight, Taylor shows that castration is not now, nor has it always been, about loss. In the medieval tale of Abelard and Heloise a violent castration makes Abelard a better theologian. In the year two thousand a sterile but otherwise functioning man is a boon to the woman who desires sex without the burdens of pregnancy.
Clever, offbeat, and learned, Castration turns an unusual and discomforting topic into a thoroughly enjoyable narrative of man's obsessive relationship to his penis, his sexuality, and his manhood.

About the Author
Gary Taylor is Professor of English and Director of the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies at the University of Alabama. His books include Cultural Selection: Why Some Achievements Stand the Test of Time and Others Don't and Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from the Restoration to the Present. He is the general editor of the Oxford Shakespeare.

Customer Reviews

Research shortage inhibits best evidence
While the material is certainly of interest and invites additional information, like most accounts and reports on this subject. research unavailability is so severe that opinion pieces creep in to bolster the gaps where accounts of facts fail to surface.