Hinweis: The 3rd GOTH Symposium (18-19 May 2023) – Gender and Otherness in the Humanities

10. Mai 2023

Programme: The 3rd GOTH Symposium: 18-19 May 2023.

Location: The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

Non-presenters: online participation only, please book via Eventbrite: (https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-3rd-goth-symposium-tickets-585836100547).

Please check GOTH website for latest details: http://fass.open.ac.uk/research/centres/goth

Symposium organizers – GOTH Committee:

- Dr M A Katritzky – Director, GOTH & Barbara Wilkes Research Fellow in Theatre Studies

Dr Christine Plastow – GOTH Web and Media Manager & Lecturer in Classical Studies
Dr Molly Ziegler – Lecturer in Drama and Performance Studies, Department of English & Creative Writing.
Dr Emilia Wilton-Godberfforde – Lecturer and Head of French, WELS.

Guest Co-Organizer: Prof. Dr. Birgit Ulrike Münch, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn

Event Support: Dr Sally Blackburn-Daniels, The Open University & University of Teeside

(FASS-GOTH-Admin@open.ac.uk).

Day 1 Thursday 18 May 2023

9:30-10:00 Registration & coffee

10:00-10:30 Welcome and Introduction to the 3rd GOTH Symposium:

A. Katritzky (Director, GOTH & Barbara Wilkes Research Fellow in Theatre Studies, OU) & Birgit Münch (Professor of Art History, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn)

Panel 1 – IRL (The Open University, Milton Keynes) & ONLINE:

LINK TO JOIN (TBC)

10:30-12:00 POSTGRADUATE LIGHTNING PANEL:

Chair: Christine Plastow

10:30-10:45 Chair’s Introduction; Report of the convenors of the OU’s monthly GOTH PG Forum (Kim Pratt & Antonia Saunders) on the Forum’s activities and their doctoral research.

10.45-11.45 5-minute PGR lightning presentations:

Members of the OU GOTH PG Forum:

Kim Pratt, When is the Self not the Self?: When it’s the Other.
Antonia Saunders, Jewish Women and English Women in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda
Rochelle Mallet, Gender in early childhood education.
Lucy Morgan, Single men and manhood in early modern England
Sarah Bower, The Family: The Nuclear Option? Daughters in the 1780s and the 1960s
Gwyneth Jones, 1816, Fanny Imlay travels to Swansea

External guest speakers:

Deirdre Parkes, Mothers and Others: Intersecting identities and otherness in a modern performance reception of the Medea myth.
Johanna Johnen, Female ‘otherness’ in depictions of Illness in the 17th and 18th century

11.45-12.00 Q&A

12:00-13:00 Lunch (provided)

13:00-14:00 Committee & Board Meeting (Board, Committee & PG convenors only)

Chair: M A Katritzky

Panel 2 (The Open University, Milton Keynes):

14:00-15:30 Performed otherness I

Chairs: Christine Plastow & Molly Ziegler.

Tobias Kämpf, Queer Pictures in a Straight Frame: The Ovidian Narrative of Jupiter and Calisto in Early Modern Art
Kathrin Wagner, (Homo)eroticism in visual translations of Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander (1593)
Hannah Brumby, ‘Faints Aeneas to remember Troy, in whose defence he fought so valiantly?’: Aeneas’s Diminishing Masculinity in Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage.

15:30-16:00 Tea & coffee

16:00-17:30 Performed otherness II

Chairs: Christine Plastow & Molly Ziegler.

Cat Stiles, Queer Creatures: The Sexual Embodiment of Monstrosity in Early Modern Literature
Irini Picolou, Gender and Exceptionality in Early Modern Spain: La barbuda de Peñaranda by Juan Sánchez Cotán and La mujer barbuda by Jusepe de Ribera

18:30 Conference dinner (cost & details TBC to delegates)

Day 2 Friday 19 May 2023

Panel 3 (The Open University, Milton Keynes):

10:00-11:15 Collectible otherness, 1500-1800, I

Chairs: M A Katritzky & Birgit Münch.

Charlotte Colding Smith, Giants’ Teeth, Dwarf Embroidery, and Saints’ Ribs: Collectable ‘Otherness’ in Churches and Wunderkammern between 1500 and 1800
Marina Vidas, Otherness, Gender, and Race: Portraits of African Children at the Danish Court, 1550-1700

11:15-11:45 Tea & coffee

11:45-13:00 Collectible otherness, 1500-1800, II

Chairs: M A Katritzky & Birgit Münch.

Hannah-Louisa Hochbaum, The domesticated monster: the early modern perception of (court)’dwarfs’ in context of European exoticism
Michelle Moseley, Visualizing Large Primates as “Other” in Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-Century Curiosity Culture

13:00-14:30 Lunch (provided)

Panel 4 (The Open University, Milton Keynes):

14:30-16:00 Closing discussion: panels & publication

Chairs: M A Katritzky, Birgit Münch, Emilia Wilton-Godberfforde, Molly Ziegler.

16:00-16:15 Closing Remarks

Christine Plastow & Molly Ziegler.

ABSTRACTS:

Sarah Bower

The Family: The Nuclear Option? Daughters in the 1780s and the 1960s

Sarah Bower is a novelist and short story writer. Her fourth novel, ‚Lines and Shadows‘ will be published this summer by Story Machine. She is currently half way through a PhD in creative and critical writing at the Open University, where she is also an associate lecturer. sarah.bower@open.ac.uk

Hannah Brumby,

‘Faints Aeneas to remember Troy, in whose defence he fought so valiantly?’: Aeneas’s Diminishing Masculinity in Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage.

Christopher Marlowe greatly emasculates Aeneas in his reimagining of the Trojan hero in Dido, Queen of Carthage (1594), especially when compared to Virgil’s presentation of the same figure in his Aeneid. Why does Marlowe do this? And how does this authorial decision resonate with early modern beliefs regarding masculine military status and the display of emotional identity? Responding to Shields’ (2002) theory of the continuing influence of gender upon emotion, this paper will examine the ways in which Marlowe conceptualises early modern melancholy and military masculinity through his presentation of Aeneas. Situating melancholy within the wider realm of gender studies uncovers the specific challenges that faced the early modern military identity, especially with regards to emotional display and the maintenance and protection of masculine values. The paper will consist of a comparative analysis between Dido and its key source material – Virgil’s Aeneid – in order to identify and understand Marlowe’s reimagining of Aeneas as other. Despite his heavy reliance on Virgil, Marlowe embellishes the classical narrative with the moments of masculine emotional display which resonate with the late sixteenth-century beliefs regarding both masculinity and melancholy exemplified in the medical literature of the period. The paper will later turn to Timothie Bright’s 1586 Treatise of Melancholy as an example of such literature, which will provide an exemplar of late sixteenth-century medical thinking regarding the melancholy condition. Written at the height of the ‘golden age’ of melancholy, Bright’s book encapsulates renaissance medical thinking regarding melancholy, exploring its status as both a physiological illness and set of psychological extremes, both of which are explored in Marlowe’s play.

Hannah-Louisa Hochbaum,

The domesticated monster: the early modern perception of (court)’dwarfs’ in context of European exoticism

The early modern perception of people with dwarfism was, in large part, informed by their entrainment with the mythological Pygmies, a dwarfish people regarded as iconic combatants of the migratory cranes and said to inhabit the marshes of Northern Africa. In fact, the Classical Pygmy myth was incorporated into the early modern, (proto-)scientific treatises resulting in a genealogical entwinement of both Pygmies and dwarfs. The scholarly examination of the Pygmy is largely limited to their early modern perception as an embodiment of a monstrous race; to my knowledge, no literature examines comprehensively this linkage between Pygmy and dwarf, nor their shared narrative as lowly creatures — i.e. the amphibians, reptiles and insects of the forest’s

undergrowth (sottobosco). As I will expound on, this narrative is vividly reflected in both early modern, (proto-)scientific treatises and the pictorial language of the Italian Renaissance: people with dwarfism and sottobosco creatures are depicted together in various artworks. Given their shared role as highly sought-after individuals and collectable objects – due to their deformità and their manifestation as lusus naturae – a few selected examples will exhibit that their pairing is unsurprising in its contemporary context and their mutual perception is formally implied. I will briefly elaborate on the associative structure of the (Pygmy-)dwarf and lowly creature in both written and visual sources, demonstrating the extent to which their shared perception is evident in

the early modern visual culture – i.e. which (iconographic) attributes convey their inherent connection. My final case study, Andrea del Sarto’s fresco Tribute to Caesar (1520), will examine the robustness of the previously established narratives and applicability of their pictorial strategies.

Johanna Johnen,

Female ‘otherness’ in depictions of Illness in the 17th and 18th century

Health and illness are no absolutes in human existence. Every person, disregarding their sex, exists in an ambivalent state between those two throughout their life. These categories are however not neutral, they are morally and aesthetically charged. This is also noticeable in artworks throughout different centuries that depict a manifold of illnesses. The way in which these diseases are shown do not only give testimony to the current medical knowledge at that time, but they rather show concepts of ‘ideal’ and ‘abnormal’ in different societies regarding the body and more importantly gender. This is especially the case in allegorical embodiment of abstract concepts like illness, mostly depicted by representations of female bodies. The high point of pathologized female figures representing disease is in the 19th century, when the two-sex model reinforced demonizing women and pathologizing their bodies and sexuality in general, which is especially visible in artistic images of syphilis. But even before that, early modern visual culture represents disease disproportionally often as women. Using the outdated and generalized explanation that allegories and personifications in art are mostly female however does not suffice. The image of the female body is always a reference to the construct of femininity itself. In premodern depictions of disease the female body is – so I will demonstrate in my paper – constructed as the pathologized ‘other’ to the healthy male and therefore used to embody illnesses like the plague and the antitype of health in general.

Johanna Johnen, born in 1993, studied Romance philology and History of Art at the University of Cologne, including one year abroad at Universidad de Sevilla. Afterwards she completed her master’s degree in History of Art with a focus on art market studies as well as early modern and modern art. During her studies she worked at the Institute of History of Art as an academic assistant for the professorship of general History of Art. Currently she is working at the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Cologne. In 2020 she started her dissertation project on the iconography of illnesses with focus on depictions of syphilis, gout, and tuberculosis between 1745 and 1920 analyzing their stereotypical portrayal as gendered diseases. Since April 2021 she is a collegiate of the a.r.t.e.s Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne.

Gwyneth Jones

1816, Fanny Imlay travels to Swansea

Gwyneth Jones lives in Wales and writes short and flash fictions. Under the pen name Jupiter Jones, she is the two-time winner of the Colm Tóibín International Prize and her most recent novella-in-flash, Gull Shit Alley and Other Roads to Hell was published by Ad Hoc Fiction. She is currently a PhD candidate at the OU researching form and narrative purpose in the novella-in-flash. gwyneth.jones@open.ac.uk

Tobias Kämpf,

Queer Pictures in a Straight Frame: The Ovidian Narrative of Jupiter and Calisto in Early Modern Art

This paper aims at a gendered analysis of early modern visual representations of the Ovidian myth of Jupiter, king of the gods, and Calisto, a virgin huntress from the entourage of the goddess Diana (Metamorphoses II, 401-440), taking into account fundamental distinctions between verbal and visual representative media. In the epos, the innocent, defenceless Calisto allows Jupiter’s approach because he adopts the female disguise of her leader. All too suddenly, however, his passionate kisses surpass the level of friendship and eventually lead to a rape. While the literary narrative frames the episode as an unmistakably heterosexual encounter passing through a stage of temporary travesty, its visual representations are far more ambiguous; for visual conventions require concentration on one central moment, ideally the peripeteia. In the case of Jupiter and Calisto, that moment coincides with the god’s display of friendly affection turning into violent passion. As Jupiter is still in the guise of Diana, this ultimately leads to a depiction of homosexual intercourse.

The diverse ways artists have interpreted this moment reveal changing attitudes to same-sex attraction. In his treatment of the subject in 1613 (Kassel, Wilhelmshöhe), Peter Paul Rubens mitigates the homosexual message by stressing Jupiter’s imperfect disguise. He shows a stereotypically male Diana accompanied by Jupiter’s animal attribute, the eagle. Yet Rubens is far more explicit than his Venetian predecessor Andrea Schiavone (died 1564) who painted Jupiter in Diana’s hunting dress, but with a full white beard (London, National Gallery). By contrast, the Enlightenment seems to encourage the depiction of straightforward Sapphic lovemaking, as shown by Adriaen van der Werff in 1712 (Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum) and especially in the numerous variations on the subject by François Boucher.

Rochelle Mallet

Gender in early childhood education.

Bio: Rochelle Mallet [she/her] began their professional association with Early Childhood Education and Care in 2009. Rochelle worked in the sector as an Early Years practitioner for many years. In that time, she fulfilled many roles from Equality and Diversity coordinator to manager. Rochelle completed an undergraduate degree in Childhood and Youth Studies with The Open University in 2017, followed by a master’s in Early Childhood Education at Anglia Ruskin University in 2018. She is now a Postgraduate Research Student at The Open University within the faculty of Well-being, Education and Language Studies (WELS). Rochelle’s research is titled ‘How do concepts of gender emerge within the Early Childhood Education and Care environment?’ Rochelle is interested in the ways infants and young children experience and learn gender within their time at nursery. She is particularly interested in the ways in which gender norms, the gender binary and traditional notions of femininity and masculinity are promoted and challenged by infants, young children and the adults who look after them. rochelle.mallet@open.ac.uk

Lucy Morgan

Single men and manhood in early modern England

Lucy Morgan is a third year PhD student at the University of Sheffield. Her thesis examines the cultural depictions and lived experiences of bachelor and widowed men in England in the period 1650-1750. More widely, she is interested in the intersection of gender and the establishment of normative or acceptable behaviour. lrmorgan2@sheffield.ac.uk

Michelle Moseley,

Visualizing Large Primates as “Other” in Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-Century Curiosity Culture

The first live large primates in Early Modern Europe presented a moment of wonder and confusion; while small monkeys had been known there for centuries, their larger cousins were new phenomena that had no prior place in the arena of public curiosity displays. The first known live primate (likely a chimpanzee) appeared in the seventeenth century, with two more, and later an orangutan following by mid-eighteenth century. Images and texts that depict these large primates are, of course, preoccupied with their human-like appearance and abilities, and debates on the nature of these creatures from this period are well-studied. In contrast, idiosyncratic visual representations of large primates, for example, Gerard Scotin’s 1738 Madame Chimpanzee, an advertisement for a London spectacle involving an ape (among other similar images) have largely been overlooked in discourse on animal identity and curiosity culture. These images doubled as both spectacle advertisements and implicit warnings about ruptures in an anthropocentric natural order. Live ape images were a significant means by which newly discovered large primates were constructed as a necessary “other,” a task that grappled with the inexplicable complexities of the human-like qualities of large primates alongside their animality. In doing so, these images collapsed contexts of Natural History illustration, concepts rooted in cabinet display and collecting as underpinnings of public spectacle. This paper probes the construction of a critical, “othered” identity in early representations of live primates (noting gender, as all were female). Depictions of apes in contexts of public display visualized a sort of performance portraiture that diverged from previous animal spectacles: it individualized and anthropomorphized large primates, while eliciting uncomfortable questions about the place of apes relative to humans. An examination of visualized large primates allows an interrogation of how these unusual images reconciled an evolutionary moment in shaping animal identity within curiosity culture.

Deirdre Parkes

Mothers and Others: Intersecting identities and otherness in a modern performance reception of the Medea myth.

By the Bog of Cats, by Marina Carr, was performed in the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 2015. Hester Swane is a character who is ‘othered’ due to the intersectional identities of her gender, and her socio-economic background. Hester is a member of the Irish Travelling Community, and a victim of childhood trauma, and her actions throughout the play are seen as deviant. Hester’s portrayal of ‘bad girl’ vs ‘good girl’ Caroline, is reflected in the contrast between Hester’s mother (bad girl), and Hester’s closest mother-figure, Monica (good girl). This concept of otherness comes about through the societal norms forced upon the characters. There is a clear contrast between the way Hester behaves, and how it is assumed she should behave because of her perceived gender role. The intention to shock is as evident as in Euripides’ Medea. This seems to reflect the way in which audience members consider the gendered role of the mother within the wider constraints of the story. If the strict adherence to gender roles was removed from the Medea myth, it would be interesting to see what the audience reaction would be. Hester’s perceived deviancy is seen through the gendered lens of what it is to be a ‘good girl’ and is also attributed to her foreignness, just as Medea’s deviancy was characterised by her status as a ‘barbaroi’ or non-Greek. If drama reflects what is seen as ‘normal’ or that which is considered ‘other’, future receptions of the Medea myth could be significant in the development of non-gendered roles in stories that have historically promoted otherness. Furthermore, this could lead to a greater awareness of the centrality of our shared experiences, rather than promoting differences.

I am a writer living in Northern Ireland. I am currently studying with the OU on A350: Greek and Roman myth. I hold degrees in Psychology (Open University), Theatre Studies (University of Ulster), and a MSt in Creative Writing (Oxford University). I have taught at junior and senior level for several years. My research interests include forgotten women in history. I am writing a biography of Louisa Tyndall, wife of the Victorian scientist, John Tyndall (president of the Royal Institute).

Irini Picolou,

Gender and Exceptionality in Early Modern Spain: La barbuda de Peñaranda by Juan Sánchez Cotán and La mujer barbuda by Jusepe de Ribera

La barbuda de Peñaranda (1590) by Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560–1627) and La mujer barbuda (1631) by Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652) depict bearded women performing feminine and societal roles. The paintings offer emotive and hyper-realistic portrayals of Brígida del Río and Magdalena Ventura, dismantling the perceived abjection and liminality of bearded women in early modern Spain. The works contest the fixity of a binary gender system in the early modern era and interrogate modern understandings of gendered performance and alterity. In so doing, they reveal how the otherness of bearded women is a socially constructed phenomenon developed on subjectively heteronormative grounds. The first part of the study will analyse the humanizing aspects of the paintings, demonstrating how they challenge the normalization of a binary system within their temporal and social contexts. The second part will compare the textual representations of Brígida and Magdalena shown in Emblema 64 from Emblemas morales (1610) by Sebastián de Covarrubias and on the stele of Ribera’s painting. It will compare the emblem’s stigmatization of ambiguously gendered individuals to the mutually voyeuristic and normalizing response towards Magdalena’s appearance. Such insights will show how the construction of alterity takes place within the limits of social, artistic, and didactic agendas. Subsequently, this study will reveal how Judith Butler’s notion of the ‘abjected outside’ is a socially constructed phenomenon that operates within specific contexts, illustrating how the designation of bearded women as abject beings is ingrained in patriarchal sensitivities and interests that govern a normative system of gender.

Kim Pratt

When is the Self not the Self?: When it’s the Other.

Kim Pratt studied for both her undergraduate and Masters degrees at the Open University and began her part-time PhD in Classics at the OU in October 2018. The title of her thesis is ‘Monsters as the Other: A Defence of Polyphemos from Homer’s Odyssey to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’ which challenges the supposed binaries between Monster and Hero. Her research focuses on the Cyclops, Polyphemos following his progression from man-eating ogre and unrequited lover in antiquity to his emergence as the Creature from Mary Shelley’s nineteenth century novel Frankenstein. By examining the concept of monstrosity from the perspective of behaviour rather than just appearance, her analysis of selected texts searches for signs of ambivalence and ambiguity towards, and tension and interplay between, monster and hero – ‘Other’ and ’Self’. She has been a co-convenor of the GOTH PG Forum since its inception in October 2020. kim.pratt@open.ac.uk

Antonia Saunders

Jewish Women and English Women in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda

Antonia Saunders studied for both her BA and MA at The Open University. Her primary interest is in the novel in all its forms with a particular concentration on the nineteenth and early twentieth century. She began her part time PhD at the OU in October 2020. The working title of her thesis is ‚The construction of a Jewish Identity in histories and novels of the nineteenth century‘ which considers the literary and historiographical contexts of representations of Jewish people and Jewish Identity. Since October 2022 Antonia has been a co-convenor of the GOTH PG Forum. antonia.saunders@open.ac.uk

Charlotte Colding Smith,

Giants’ Teeth, Dwarf Embroidery, and Saints’ Ribs: Collectable ‘Otherness’ in Churches and Wunderkammern between 1500 and 1800

Beginning from the treatise of Samuel Quiccheberg in 1565, the holdings of European Kunstkammern were meticulously organized. These systems of order developed in dialogue with revised classifications drawn up from contemporary scientific research, but were often still rooted in traditional orderings of nature. Descriptions of dwarves and giants betray this conflict. This paper will consider the acquisition and exhibition of bones and relics related to giants and dwarves in Wunderkammern and in public spaces such as ecclesiastical collections. It will employ examples dating between 1500 and 1800 from Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen, Albrecht V’s collection in Munich, Schloss Ambrass, the museum of Ferdinando Cospi in Bologna, the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg, and the Anatomical Theatre in Leiden. How were these bones identified––and often misidentified––in catalogues and other object descriptions? How did these identifications fit into the evolving classification systems of the natural world as represented in natural history publications and early encyclopedic works? How do these problems surface in the establishment of natural history museums and in the emergent fields of zoology, anatomy and ethnography? To contextualize these questions, this paper will examine the stories of court dwarves and giants living at the courts where the Kunstkammern originated, as well as the artefacts and remains that were shipped to courts, university collections and anatomical theatres.

Cat Stiles,

Queer Creatures: The Sexual Embodiment of Monstrosity in Early Modern Literature

As creatures who, by definition, exist beyond the boundaries of normative spheres of existence, monsters are constructed as a product of deviant subjectivity which is polarised against what is considered to be safe, natural, and normal which, in early modern English culture, is often defined by a stable notion of the heterosexual and the male in opposition to the unstable feminine and non-conforming other. Focusing on texts from the early modern period, this paper will explore the ways in which queer-coded corporeal deformity has historically been expressed as physical monstrosity that is specifically located in the sexual body. The ‘Queer Creatures’ of this study are rendered monstrous objects of abjection through their destabilisation of and resistance to a patriarchal order which insists of a binary model of sex and gender. This paper will focus on two examples: the monstrous genitals of Duessa in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590), and the Siren in Lyly’s Loves Metamorphosis (1601) whose virginal face belies a monstrous lower half. In these examples, both are outwardly presented in hyper-feminine terms, and their monstrosity is only revealed after their successful seduction of the conventionally masculine (and gender conforming) figures. That it is in their sexual organs that their monstrosity is located serves to illustrate the way in which this particular type of monstrosity is inherently tied to concepts of sexual difference by its corporeal location. These creatures use queer-coded deformity as hyperbolic expressions of the duality between the desirability and the monstrosity of the seducing woman, expressing both the pleasure and the transgression offered by her physical body. The feminine presentation of gender is juxtaposed by the monstrosity of the corporeality of their sexual organs which are presented as other, neither male or female, monstrous in their defiance of a binary model of sex and gender identity.

Marina Vidas,

Otherness, Gender, and Race: Portraits of African Children at the Danish Court, 1550-1700

My paper will consider the historical construction of otherness, gender, childhood, and race in paintings which are in the collections of Rosenborg and Frederiksborg Castles, Denmark. Painted by northern European artists in the period between 1550-1700, the works depict African children of both sexes who were servants or slaves at the Danish court. In a number of the paintings, the children are posed with Danish aristocrats or animals to whom they are either contrasted or likened. The African children display stereotypical features of thick lips, flat and broad noses, and kinky hair and are attired in white clothes and accessories, thereby laying emphasis on their dark skin. Through the resulting dichotomy, “blackness” becomes part of their constructed identity. Black children are furthermore painted with much more emotionally expressive faces than the white aristocrats. For example, in one painting, the African girl’s open mouth, an indication of emotion and an absence of self-control, shows a lack of knowledge or concern with contemporary standards of female decorum. In another portrait by a Danish painter, an animal which has allusions to Africa, is depicted with a black girl. Because they stand in similar poses, have the same dark skin color, and they entwine arms, the painting dehumanizes the child. My paper will contribute to the understanding of power relationships at the Danish court, the role of otherness in the construction of identity, as well as historical, cultural, gender and racial biases.

Kathrin Wagner,

(Homo)eroticism in visual translations of Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander (1593)

The story of Hero and Leander was first presented to a readership in Ovid’s Heroides and Virgil’s Georgics. Musaeus picks it up during the fifth century in Opuluscum de Herone and Leandro but it is Christopher Marlowe’s interpretation that presents the story in the richest detail. Marlowe’s poem was left unfinished when he died in 1593. George Chapman completed and published the work in 1598. The story of Hero and Leander was particularly popular at the court of Mantua, where Monteverdi composed the now lost cantata Ero e Leandro around 1612 and Rubens made a painting with the same title in 1607. Nicolas Lanier, who negotiated the art collection for Charles I. at the Mantuan court, introduced the topic to the court in London. It is here where the German Francis Cleyn (Franz Klein), leading artist at the tapestry workshop in Mortlake, became aware of the story, which led him to design the tapestry cycle Hero and Leander between 1625 and 1629. Numerous sets, three of the early ones commissioned by Charles I., were made until the early eighteenth century. Aspects of homoeroticism in Marlowe’s poem are analysed in depth within literary scholarship. Visual translations often focus on the death of Leander (e.g. Rubens 1607, van den Hoecke 1635) but it is Cleyn’s tapestry cycle that depicts the fatal story in six scenes. Since three of these show Leander swimming naked, questions must be asked as to how present (homo)eroticism is in Cleyn’s work. This paper argues that Marlowe’s interpretation of Leander should be seen as a safe space to explore fluent concepts of sexuality, gayness and homosexuality and that this is translated into Cleyn’s visual narrative, which the sixteenth-century viewer approached in a similarly open way, depending on their individual preferences.