Softness - masculinities, failure and softening (15th - 17th Century)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Daniele Maira
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; Early Modern History
• Term: from 2015 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 277571712

If one looks at virility as a form of virtue in the Renaissance (vir, form Latin vis or virtus according to Cicero’s Tusculanae disputationes, II. 18), one encounters a polymorphic conglomerate of requirements that apply to the ethical, physical and rhetorical nature of the masculine. Ideal masculinity reunites thus moral pertinacity, self control, as well as a strong body composition, military heroicity, courage, a sense of honor and sexual virility. The predominant model of ideal manliness in the Renaissance is furthermore aligned with the Aristotelian primacy of sobriety (sosphrosyne in the Nicomachean Ethics); any form of excess – be it non-conformity or an exaggerated aspiration for virility- is repudiated as a form of deviance.Considerations on normative masculinity, mostly informed by Gender, Queer and Masculinity Studies, have already enhanced studies in French Renaissance literature and culture in this respect. The concept of “failure“, however, understood to be a digression from predefined, normative models, has been granted little attention. The notion of mollesse, characterizing a form of softness, is a central element in the representation of such insufficient and marginalized masculinities and permeates 15th and 16th century literature and culture. As a result of a false etymology, mollesse is approximated with the female (mollitia is read as a derivative from mulier via mollior [Lactantius, De opificio Dei, XII, 17/ Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, XI, 2.18]) and becomes thus the focal point of new and effeminate forms of masculinity that break with the normative ideals of virility.On the basis of research in the domains of historical rhetorics, cultural history and Masculinity Studies, three fields of interest have been developed that illuminate such masculinities of “failure“ as well as the paradoxical reevaluation of forms of masculine deficiency. Three years of research and several international conferences attest that along with Montaigne numerous major Renaissance authors, by recurring to the transversal notion of mollesse, reflect upon and redefine versatile forms of masculinity. A new area of study shall be dedicated to the investigation of a humanist approach to deficient masculinity in the works of Erasmus, Rabelais and Montaigne. The interplay of the four centers of interest will allow for a polyphonic junction of the different perspectives on mollesse and trace a diachronic development of normative and alternative concepts of masculinity.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants