Gender and the Body

The chapter identifies some of the places and ways in which male-female relations, together with the symbolic representations of the masculine and feminine, contribute to the construction of an image of Europe. The main sources used in the analysis are the discourses of early modern historical anthropology (tracts on the peoples of Europe and the world) and costume books engraved and printed in Europe in the XVI century. The chapter argues that early modern representations of gender identities and relations do not offer a coherent and one-dimensional image of Europe, but rather a heterogeneous and at times conflicting set of discourses, tensions and visual strategies.