Male-to-Female Crossdressing in Early Modern English Literature

<p>This volume examines and theorizes the oft-ignored phenomenon of male-to-female (MTF) crossdressing in early modern drama prose and poetry inviting MTF crossdressing episodes to take a fuller place alongside instances of female-to-male crossdressing and boy actors’ crossdressing which have long held the spotlight in early modern gender studies. The author argues that MTF crossdressing episodes are especially rich sources for socially-oriented readings of queer gender—that crossdressers’ genders are constructed and represented in relation to romantic partners communities and broader social structures like marriage economy and sexuality. Further she argues that these relational representations show that the crossdresser and his/her allies often benefit financially socially and erotically from his/her queer gender presentation a corrective to the dominant idea that queer gender has always been associated with shame containment and correction. By attending to these relational and beneficial representations of MTF crossdressers in early modern literature the volume helps to make a larger space for queer genderqueer male-bodied and queer-feminine representations in our conversations about early modern gender and sexuality. </p>