Incognito men unmasked. An exploration of masculinity in seventeenth century Venetian literature and culture of the Accademia degli Incogniti

Abstract

This thesis considers the authors of the seventeenth century Accademia degli Incogniti, and their writings inspired by libertinism, from a masculinities studies perspectives. The Venetian Academy offered a refuge to men who were affected on the level of their experience of gender by tensions on socio-political, economic, cultural and intellectual levels. These tensions are taken as the elements of a crisis of masculinity, to which freedom in writing offered a means of escape. A close reading of Antonio Rocco’s l’Alcibiade fanciullo a scola confirms not only the Incogniti’s fascination with non-(hetero)normative masculinity, it also reveals both how corrupt masculinity can become within a patriarchal system, as well as the disturbing extremes a literary articulation of libertinism’s predilection of a naturalist sexual ethics could reach. A focus on paratextual material in the Incogniti environment shows the importance of co-constructive bonds between men, and the practice of gifting texts to each other, usually through the printing of dedicatory epistles in collectively published works, establishes the Academy as a “literary fraternity”. Libertinism’s critical attitude against power constituted a shared discursive code, and remained so even after Ferrante Pallavicino’s execution for lèse majesté forced the Incogniti into a position of heightened circumspection. However, the crisis of masculinity became ever more anxious as the Incogniti’s preferred way of navigating it – writing and publishing – proved limited. Despite the cultural dominance of the Academy in Venice, the Incogniti still had to heed to patriarchal exigencies exerted by the early modern system of hegemonial masculinity.