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The Life and Legend of Catterina Vizzani - Sexual identity, science and sensationalism in Eighteenth-Century Italy and England (Paperback)
Loot Price: R2,993
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The Life and Legend of Catterina Vizzani - Sexual identity, science and sensationalism in Eighteenth-Century Italy and England (Paperback)
Series: Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2020:10
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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From the time Catterina Vizzani, a young Roman woman, began wooing
the woman she was attracted to, she did so dressed as a man.
Fleeing Rome to avoid a potential trial for sexual misdeeds, she
became Giovanni Bordoni, transitioning and becoming a male in
spirit, deed, and body, through what was the most complete physical
change possible in the eighteenth century. This volume features
Giovanni Bianchi's 1744 Italian account of Vizzani/Bordoni,
published for the first time together with a modern English
translation, making available to an English-speaking audience the
objective, scientific exploration of gender conducted by Bianchi.
John Cleland's well-known, albeit fanciful, 1751 version of the
story has also been reproduced here, shedding light on the
divergent sexual politics driving Bianchi's Italian original and
Cleland's greatly embellished English translation. Through a close
examination of Bianchi's work as anatomical practitioner and
scholar, Clorinda Donato traces the development of his advocacy for
tolerance of all sexual orientations. Several chapters address the
medical and philosophical inquiry into sexual preference,
reproduction, sexual identity, and gender fluidity which
Enlightenment anatomists from Holland to Italy engaged with in
their research concerning the relationship between the mind and the
reproductive organs. Meanwhile, it is the social implications of
gender ambiguity which may be analysed in Cleland's condemnation of
women who "pass" as men. Drawing on the biographies produced by
Bianchi and Cleland, the volume reflects on the motivation of each
author to tell the story of Vizzani/Bordoni either as a narration
of empowerment or a cautionary tale within the European context of
evolving sexual opinions, some based on scientific research, others
based on social practice and cultural norms.
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