Eunuchs in literature [*may get pretentious* alert]

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So! I just found out we get to do this huge free choice essay over the summer, on pretty much whatever we want, and I'm mega-excited.

I'm thinking of thinking it about eunuchs. About a year ago I read Caroline Dinshaw's 'Eunuch Hermeneutics', which is this totally amazing essay on Chaucer's pardoner which is just omg, it's really beautiful and sassy and clever, I'd recommend it to everyone, really.

Anyway, so, there's that, and Tristam Shandy, and Volpone I guess but the Eunuch doesn't really much. Tell me about other eunuchs! They don't have to be congenital or anything, and modern stuff is totally fine and wanted. Someone said endgame I think? I haven't read it.

Lets talk about eunuchs and castrati!

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 20:34 (twenty-one years ago)

That Anne Rice book whose title escapes me because it was so boring I never finished it. Grr...the one about the castrati. Help?

I read "A History of Celibacy" by Elizabeth Abbott recently, which contained a chapter on eunuchs and castrati, and was otherwise worth a read.

― Natalie (Penny Dreadful), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 02:29 (twenty-one years ago)

Surely somewhere in the Decameron there's a eunuch story? And possibly 1001 Nights? N.B. I don't actually know.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 02:38 (twenty-one years ago)

Wasn't there a eunuch in Gormenghast?

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 03:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Who was the eunuch in Gormenghast? I don't recall one, but my memory may be at fault.

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 08:48 (twenty-one years ago)

Have you read Barthes 'S/Z', Greg?

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 10:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Also: http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/abs/10.1525/jm.2003.20.2.196;jsessionid=jtyWwXRpesta?cookieSet=1

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 10:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm writing on S/Z loads Stevie! It works really well, 'cos Dinshaw's point is basically "Middle english reading is gendered into a penetrative sexual act, so when you get eunuchs, things go wonky" (but the way she says it! Magic) so that the fact that the whole 'constellations of meaning' thing happens with a eunuch text is just really neat! Also also also I wanna bring in DA Miller on Barthes' dequeering Zambinella and I AM SO EXCITED, it's gonna be great.

I can't view yr link, something about cookies? Probably the library computers are being lame, I'll try at home.

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 10:55 (twenty-one years ago)

(Chris, Natalie and Ann, thanks tons, I will check out all of yr tips, this is great)

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 10:57 (twenty-one years ago)

The Sun Also Rises should help.

― otto, Wednesday, 2 June 2004 13:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Wasn't Long John Silver in Treasure Island a eunuch? No...wait... I might be thinking of Kidnapped.

― Aimless (Aimless), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 14:31 (twenty-one years ago)

There's the castration scene in Ellison's Invisible Man. And I'm sure there are biographies of Farinelli, the famous castrati.

― Jocelyn (Jocelyn), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 15:01 (twenty-one years ago)

I think there are eunuchs in Kingsley Amis' "The Alteration".

― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 15:53 (twenty-one years ago)

This might help. (I have not read it, but the reviews made it sound kind of interesting.)

The Manly Eunuch

― Rockist Scientist, Wednesday, 2 June 2004 17:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Was Long John Silver in Kidnapped?

― SRH (Skrik), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 17:11 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't know if Garp would count.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 22:36 (twenty-one years ago)

Was Long John Silver in Kidnapped?

Footnote on third page of Appendix B.

― Aimless (Aimless), Thursday, 3 June 2004 00:05 (twenty-one years ago)

How about the hijira character(s) in John Irving's Son of the Circus? (Though it's a fairly negative portrayal.)

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Thursday, 3 June 2004 00:05 (twenty-one years ago)

I knew it would come to me in my sleep. The Anne Rice book in question is "Cry to Heaven".

― Natalie (Penny Dreadful), Thursday, 3 June 2004 02:23 (twenty-one years ago)

midnight's children!

― tom west (thomp), Thursday, 3 June 2004 13:08 (twenty-one years ago)

Isn't there a eunuch in Renault's Persian Boy?
If there wasn't, seems like there shoulda been.

― SJ Lefty, Thursday, 3 June 2004 20:51 (twenty-one years ago)

This is fantastically, fantastically useful. I am glad! Thanks, y'all.

Why would Garp count, Chris? I haven't read it, but figurative eunuchs are just as relevant for this, if that's it...

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 3 June 2004 22:02 (twenty-one years ago)

...the wooden leg, of course, was a symbolic displacement, as they like to say around the water cooler in the Critical Faculties section when the dean of the department is closeted with his secretary. Then they all snigger like schoolboys.

― Aimless (Aimless), Thursday, 3 June 2004 22:38 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't remember the exact results after the guy loses his penis (and that doesn't technically make him a eunuch, does it -- he'd have to lose his testicles, right?).

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 4 June 2004 03:28 (twenty-one years ago)

I watched Channel 4's programme about mutants last night, and they were talking about castrati. I didn't know that if a man is castrated before puberty, his bones don't get the signals to stop growing, so he grows to an unnatural height. Apparently all the castrati were really tall.

So there.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Friday, 4 June 2004 09:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Bagoas, protagonist of "The Persian Boy", is a eunuch (and boy-toy to Alexander the Great).

"Darconville's Cat" by Alexander Theroux (cranky brother of Paul) features an evil eunuch character, Dr. Crucifer.

I liked "Cry to Heaven" a lot - far superior to Rice's vampire novels.

― Layna Andersen (Layna Andersen), Sunday, 6 June 2004 07:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Gore Vidal's Julian, about the last pagan Roman emperor, has a lot to say about court eunuchs--their poitical power, their sexual habits, etc.--most of it negative.

― RJM (robmy), Monday, 7 June 2004 02:34 (twenty-one years ago)

OH YEAH, yeah, re Amis/Alteration... god, I love that book... it's this cross between sci-fi and historical fantasy/fiction/someerp... I won't spoil it, but go man go...

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Monday, 7 June 2004 18:49 (twenty-one years ago)

christ and the kingdom of heaven, and of course there is the old testemant as well, i did a breif essay on xian/queer hermeuntics and eunuchs, if you email me i will try to reconstruct a reading list.

― anthony, Tuesday, 8 June 2004 01:05 (twenty-one years ago)

I've mailed you, anthony.

Thanks to everyone, I really am gonna work through the tips in this thread come summer. JtN - what was that article (?) you linked to? I still can't get to it from anywhere :(

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 11:10 (twenty-one years ago)

The Eroticism of Emasculation: Confronting the Baroque Body of the Castrato

Roger Freitas Freitas

This study suggests that, against the background of early modern views of sexuality, the castrato appears not as the asexual creature sometimes implied today, but as a super-natural manifestation of a widely-held erotic ideal. Recent work in the history of sexuality has shown the prevalence in the early modern period of the "one-sex" model, in which the distinction between male and female is quantitative (with respect to "vital heat") rather than qualitative. This model provides for a large middle ground, encompassing prepubescent children, castrati, and other unusual figures. And that middle ground, in fact, seems to have been a prime locus of sexual desire: the art, literature, and historical accounts of the period argue that boys especially were often viewed -perhaps by both sexes-as erotic objects. Further evidence suggests that this sexual charge also applied to castrati. The plausibility of such an erotic image is strengthened by investigation into the actual sexual function of these singers, which seems to have fallen somewhere between historical legend and modern skepticism. Finally, a survey of castrato roles in opera, from Monteverdi to Handel, shows how these singers were deployed and suggests that their popularity could not have depended entirely on vocal skills. Instead, I argue that castrati were prized at least in part for their unique physicality, their spectacularly exaggerated embodiment of the ideal lover.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 11:14 (twenty-one years ago)

That's awesome, I'll totally look that up. Thanks!

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 11:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Wilbur Smiths River God and Warlock

― Rumpy Pumpkin (rumpypumpkin), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 15:33 (twenty-one years ago)

somewhree in firbank there MUST be an eunuch or two

― erik, Wednesday, 16 June 2004 12:17 (twenty-one years ago)

two months pass...

how you doin?

― cºzen tribiani (Cozen), Sunday, 5 September 2004 08:36 (twenty-one years ago)

It's going well! I only really started a week or so ago, cos I wanted the rest of my holiday reading out of the way, but I'm getting really into it...

― G. Eunuch (Gregory Henry), Monday, 6 September 2004 16:52 (twenty-one years ago)

The Gary Taylor book (Castration: An Abbreviated History oof Western Manhood) has possibly the single most annoying tone of any book I have ever read. It's well-researched though!

― G. Eunuch (Gregory Henry), Monday, 6 September 2004 16:54 (twenty-one years ago)

Charles Humana is kinda fun! I like a man who really /loves/ his soft porn illustrations, I think thee whole thing is just an excuse for them.

― G. Eunuch (Gregory Henry), Monday, 6 September 2004 16:55 (twenty-one years ago)

The Sun Also Rises is startlingly good, I hadn't really read any Hemingway before, I ws expecting it to be all blah blah manly blah blah terse masculine prose blah blah rum but it was just ever so awesome.

― G. Eunuch (Gregory Henry), Monday, 6 September 2004 16:57 (twenty-one years ago)

I read The Tremulous Private Body by Charles Barker, too, but it wasn't that useful 'cos I'm not THAT great at deciphering really hardcore nasty acadamese yet, so what I got out of it was basically a reiteration of Foucault, which is neat and all but um I like Foucault already.

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Monday, 6 September 2004 17:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Oops I meant to change the name there. Anyway yeah, I'm still totally gonna read everything on this thread, so thanks again y'all (especially anthony for the list!)

― G. Eunuch (Gregory Henry), Monday, 6 September 2004 17:01 (twenty-one years ago)

And then...?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 05:44 (twenty years ago)

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