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Female Cross-Dressing And Fragile Masculinity In Le Roman De Silence And Twelfth Night, Nicole Robilotta
Female Cross-Dressing And Fragile Masculinity In Le Roman De Silence And Twelfth Night, Nicole Robilotta
College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations
This paper explores how fragile masculinity has been portrayed in Medieval and Renaissance literature by analyzing the impact of female-crossing dressing on male characters in Heldris of Cornwall’s Le Roman de Silence and William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. In the 13th century French Romance that centers on the debate between nature and nurture, Silence is a female raised as a male to circumvent patrilineal inheritance laws who becomes a celebrated knight. In Twelfth Night, Viola cross-dresses as Cesario, an act that results in the unintentional winning of Olivia’s love as well as confused (and ultimately resolved) romantic feelings from Count Orsino. …