Generation and Degeneration

“[O]wing to the strength of its individual contributions, this wide-ranging and engaging collection will likely appeal to scholars, teachers, and students whose interests include some combination of comparative literature and culture.” - Catherine S. Cox , Sixteenth Century Journal

"Generation and Degeneration demonstrates just how fertile the crossbreeding of literature, gender studies, and history can be. . . . [T]horough, concise and convincing . . . ." - Cheryl Goldstein , Comitatus

"[A] suggestive example of how the old, male genealogies of history have changed dramatically." - Guido Ruggiero , Renaissance Quarterly

"[A]n ambitious, wide-ranging, and deeply comparative project. . . . [T]he collection thoughtfully challenges the boundaries that habitually limit our fields of inquiry, and demonstrates many of the rewards of exploring a wider intellectual landscape. The book offers a number of extremely intelligent, original, and rigorous researched essays; it will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and critics, particularly those with interests in the history of gender, medicine, and the body." - Tanya Pollard, Shakespeare Studies

"[T]his bold and inventive collection will inspire readers from a wide range of scholarly perspectives to form their own new theories on bodies, gender and generation in pre-modern Europe." - Kim M. Phillips , Parergon

"Valeria Finucci’s introduction provides a highly useful synopsis of the essays, taking great pains to justify their inclusion in this collection and how they fit within the overall themes of the other essays in each section. So lucid is the introduction that anyone without the time to read each essay in depth can refer to the brief overview provided by Finucci and glean an accurate sense of the central argument of each contribution. . . . [T]he editors have done an admirable job in organizing these contributions. . . . By incorporating so many disciplines, the editors must be commended on their ability to maintain a strong continuity throughout this book. There is no doubt that the essays presented in this volume represent highly profound scholarship and prove to be an important reference point for anyone interested in issues of gender and generation." - Jason Sager , Sixteenth Century Journal

“[This book’s] ensemble of motifs is not simply cast in currently fashionable psychoanalytical language. It displays a wide array of critical perspectives yet a homogeneity of viewpoints and ideological bents occur through its disparate contributions. A truly unified piece of scholarship.” - Giuseppe F. Mazzotta, author of The Worlds of Petrarch

“The glory of this collection is the way it tackles quite abstract issues corporally. It reminds the reader how fundamental is the relation between human physiology and human ideas of history.” - Susan Noakes, author of Timely Reading: Between Exegesis and Interpretation