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Cuckoldry, Impotence and Adultery in Europe (15th-17th Century). Edited by sar a F. Matthews-grieCo. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014. Pp. 326. $119.95 (cloth).
"The erotic was omnipresent in Renaissance and early modern Europe, both materially and metaphorically," argues Sara Matthews-Grieco in the introduction to this intriguing collection of ten essays on the figuration of masculine sexual failure between 1400 and 1700 (7). What is surprising is how little attention scholars have paid to the "dark and complex reverse" (2) of the period's well-known obsession with female sexual continence. In early modern perception, male impotence led directly to (wifely) adultery and cuckoldry, the greatest humiliation women in this hierarchical society were capable of inflicting on men. Understandably, therefore, the troika of impotence, adultery, and cuckoldr y was a source of concern and anxiety but also of entertainment and critique throughout the period this book examines. The collection brings together analyses from literar y scholars, historians, and art historians and is divided into three sections that could be roughly described as showing how impotence was performed (rituals), how it was treated (remedies), and how (and for what purposes) it was visualized (paintings, drawings, prints). Seven essays focus on Italian evidence, and one each is devoted to Swiss, English, and French sources.
House scorning and charivari, discussed by Jacqueline Musacchio and M. A. Katritsky, were two of the most common kinds of rituals by which early modern communities expressed their distaste for cuckolds or, better, for sexual conduct that did not conform to the patriarchal marital model. In Molly Bourne's essay on the test for potency inflicted on a young Mantuan crown prince...