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Introduction

Historical Context

A scandalous novel, now known to us as The Island of Hermaphrodites,[1] was circulating in the streets of Paris in 1605. A satire of the French court, it was quite popular, selling for the exorbitant price of two écus.[2] Yet Henri IV (1553–1610; reigned 1589–1610) refused to punish the author, whose name did not appear anywhere in the book but who apparently was known nonetheless. This supposed author thus escaped the tribunals established to suppress anti-monarchical works.[3] Most scholars connect this novel to the court of Henri III (1551–1589; reigned 1574–1589), often criticized for its wastefulness and corruption, to the Valois king himself and his courtiers, who were accused of sodomy in the polemical literature of the period.

This novel appears in the wake of the French Wars of Religion (1562–1629), that is to say, after the Edict of Nantes (1598), which has often been considered the end of these wars, but well before the final siege of La Rochelle (1627–1628) and the Edict of Alès (1629), which eliminated the last fortified city under Protestant control.[4] During this period, eight wars ravaged a wide area of France,[5] with two to four million people dead from war, massacre, famine, and disease.[6] The violence of these wars is evoked constantly but subtly throughout the novel and is more overtly addressed in the parodies of political treatises that are inserted near the end of the narrative.

These evocations of the wars can be seen as a response to the official suppression of all mention of them, whether in speech or in print. The policy of oubliance, a policy of deliberate forgetting of these wars,[7] resulted in frequent royal edicts commanding that the events of the Wars of Religion should be treated as dead and buried, even as these wars were ongoing. This prohibition was first stated in the Edict of Amboise of 1563:

We have ordered and order, intend, wish, and it pleases us, that all affronts and offenses that the iniquity of the times, and the events which have occurred, could have given rise to among our said subjects, and all other things that have happened and were caused by the present agitations, remain extinguished, as if dead, buried and never having happened.[8]

This command that the past be buried—echoed in the Edicts of Saint-Germain (1570), Boulogne (1573), Beaulieu (1576), and Bergerac (1577), as well as in the Edict of Nantes in 1598—calls to mind the very violence that these edicts seek to efface. Orders to forget did not have the desired effect, as literary and historical works commemorating or evoking the violence proliferated in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

The seemingly disparate sections of this novel, focusing at first on the material aspects of court life, then offering a long list of parodic laws and two political treatises as well as a poem denouncing the “hermaphrodites,” gain greater coherence when read in the context of these religious wars. All of the descriptions, many of the laws, and the entirety of the treatises allude to the violence of these wars either directly or metaphorically.

The Work: Assumed Author, Characters

We know very little about the author of The Island of Hermaphrodites, and most scholarship on this novel respects the original anonymity of the author, since the novel was published without a title page and thus without authorial attribution, date or place of publication, or publisher. Pierre de L’Estoile, who wrote extensive journals over the course of the reigns of both Henri III and Henri IV, claims the author is Artus Thomas (perhaps Thomas Artus), who completed de Vigenère’s translation of the History of the Decline of the Greek Empire.[9] Artus Thomas also added epigrams to the translation of Images or Paintings of the two Philostrates;[10] the style of these poems seems to echo that of the opening lines of The Island of Hermaphrodites. He also produced works on Catholic doctrine and, according to Ilana Zinguer, a proto-feminist work supporting the education of women.[11] A dialogue against slander is also attributed to him.[12] This body of work suggests a fairly broad range of knowledge, reflected in encyclopedic descriptions offered in The Island of Hermaphrodites of architecture, clothing, court tableware, menus, and furnishings, Galenic dietary theories and practices, laws, and political philosophy.[13] This introduction will offer some background on these bodies of knowledge.

The main characters of the novel are called “hermaphrodites,” but their identities are not directly related to any bodily form, as they are fully covered by clothing, masks, veils, and gloves.[14] As Claude-Gilbert Dubois points out, not only does the term hermaphrodite refer to a “biological reality” but it also becomes a political term, one particularly directed at political moderates who advocated for religious toleration and who were accused by religious extremists as being incapable of choosing a side and therefore of having a double nature.[15] Dubois briefly reviews the foundational myth of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, in which the nymph, enamored of the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, asks the gods to join the two of them together in eternity. Her wish is granted, but in Ovid’s version of the myth, Salmacis’s identity disappears entirely, and only a weakened or effeminate Hermaphroditus remains.[16] This version of the myth seems to inform the novel’s representation of the “hermaphrodites” in some scenes, when they are putting on makeup or having their hair curled in ways that evoke feminine fashion of the day. This obsession with fashion and with bodily aesthetics reflects accusations of effeminacy and of homosexuality in political pamphlets criticizing the court of Henri III of France, and in particular the mignons, his followers, known for their elegant dress.[17] However, it is also suggested in the dressing scenes that the “hermaphrodites” use clothing to change gender roles at will, and in various parts of the novel, they are referred to as Lordladies (Either Seigneursdames or Syresdones, the latter taken from a French word for lord, sire and the Italian word for a lady, donna), thus suggesting what today we would consider to be crossdressing, genderqueer, transgender, and intersex identities.

Sixteenth-century medical discourse presents a range of possible bodily configurations that fit into the definition of a “hermaphrodite.” Ambroise Paré, for example, lists four different possible types of “hermaphrodites” in his treatise, On Monsters and Marvels: the male hermaphrodite, the female hermaphrodite, the neuter hermaphrodite (one that displays characteristics of neither sex predominantly), and the double hermaphrodite (which displays characteristics of both sexes).[18] Both of these sources for understanding the figure of the hermaphrodite were very accessible in the culture of the late sixteenth century. Political pamphlets were widely distributed during the Wars of Religion and there was a proliferation of medical treatises concerned with non-normative bodies more generally, but with gender ambiguity more specifically.[19]

Scholarly and Critical Approaches

Most of the scholarship of the last few decades on The Island of Hermaphrodites has offered an analysis of the novel as a satire of the sexual behavior of members of the court of Henri III or that of Henri IV. The novel was seen as purely dystopian, with the “hermaphroditic” inhabitants of the island used as negative examples in order to validate binary gender norms and promote other norms of political and social behavior.[20] David Fausett offers a more nuanced analysis, noting about The Island of Hermaphrodites that “the author’s satirical intentions seem to range more widely than Henri and his court.”[21] Fausett evokes the strange politics of this novel, calling the society represented an “involuted, ‘poststructural’ society” in which there is a “total abdication from authority.” He sees in the narration “a striving for social realism and a critical response to the rise of political absolutism. The latter was, perhaps, seen as intensifying a quasi-erotic relation of mastery and subjection between state and subject.”[22] This critique of a nascent absolutism is made explicit in the political treatises inserted at the end of the narration. Fausett’s observation of the connection between the sexual mores of the “hermaphrodites” and this anti-absolutist, even anti-hierarchical, stance is echoed by Todd Reeser’s analysis of the link between gender ambiguity and social disorder in the novel.[23] So, while most critics recognize a political aspect to the novel, the understanding of the nature of this aspect differs somewhat among them.

Some scholarship has noted the contradictions and range of different perspectives evident in the novel. Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass noted the “proliferating possibilities” that arise from the “reversal of laws of sexual difference.”[24] Gary Ferguson has observed that this is “a far from straightforward text” and that satire and utopianism seem to coexist like conjoined opposites in this work.[25] This complexity has been analyzed in depth by Teodoro Patera, who proposes the aestheticism of the “hermaphrodites” as a counterpoint to the narrowly moralizing commentary that runs through the novel. This aestheticism can be seen as troubling the binary division of gender into male and female roles, creating an ethics of alterity that can allow the novel to be read as a new, less normative, form of utopia.[26] I would add that this ethics of alterity stands in stark contrast to the massive violence of the French Wars of Religion, which are alluded to throughout the novel. The storyteller, who starts out being very judgmental about the gender expression of the inhabitants of this island, keeps mistaking their behavior for the violence he has left behind in France, seeing scenes of torture and execution where in fact no violence is taking place. His projection of the violent and rigidly hierarchical society from which he has exiled himself onto the behavior he observes on this island is frequently made quite evident.

The World of the Court

The narration presents a seemingly ethnographic encounter between a French man and a culture he presents as strange to him, even if it evokes many French practices and laws. This double focus on France as at once itself and alien to itself is already presented in a frame narrative at the beginning of the novel that introduces the storyteller as a man who leaves France in order to avoid shedding the blood of his fellow men.[27] He travels to the New World, deciding to return only when he hears that an “august” king has established peace in France.[28] Shipwrecked with several other men, he finds himself on a floating island with no fixed location, somewhere between the “New World” and France.

This shipwrecked man begins his narration with a description of the architecture of the palace in which the rest of the action of the novel will take place. This action consists largely of him moving through the palace, observing various scenes of court life. He then describes scenes that recall the ceremonies known as the lever du roi (the levée, or rising, of the king), focusing particularly on clothing and makeup. After this, he is given an abridged list of the laws of the land, which are inserted into the narrative and constitute nearly one-third of the text. He then attends a banquet and describes at length the tableware and the food served, which evokes recent adaptations of the long tradition of Galenic dietetics such as the work of Joseph Du Chesne (1544–1609), one of Henri IV’s court doctors. He also attends the supper the servants eat after the banquet, offering a contrast between the behavior of the wealthy and that of the working classes. Finally, his guide through the palace gives him a poem and two treatises in the form of pamphlets. One treatise exhorts the subject to suffer anything for the sake of the sovereign, while the other denounces this culture of suffering. The first text parodies the political philosopher Jean Bodin’s (1529–1596) defense of absolute monarchy,[29] while the second evokes Michel de Montaigne’s (1533–1592) political thought, more focused on peaceful inclusion of differences in the system of government. At this point, the storyteller is moved to return to France, and the frame narrative breaks into the account of this strange island to note an audience that demands to hear more. The implication is that the storyteller never ceases to talk about the island he visited and so is still drawn to this seemingly unfamiliar culture.

Consisting largely of prose texts in various styles (utopian fiction, legal documents, political treatises), and some poetry, this work seems to be closest to Menippean satire in form. Menippean satire became more widely familiar in France toward the end of the sixteenth century, when Lucian of Samosata’s works were translated into French.[30] The best-known French example of this literary form is the anti-Catholic Satyre Ménippée de la vertu du Catholicon d’Espagne (Menippean Satire on the Virtue of the Spanish Catholicon),[31] published in response to the excesses of the Catholic League, which sought to eradicate Protestantism from France and to prevent Henri IV from gaining control of the country. Menippean satire is a combination of prose and verse, with a range of discourses—legal, theological, scientific, philosophical, literary—reflecting multiple perspectives. This genre often has a political orientation, as Howard D. Weinbrot has observed relative to ancient Menippean satire.[32]

Like the Satyre Ménippée, which placed all of the narrative in the context of one building (the Louvre), The Island of Hermaphrodites places all of the action in a palace that evokes the Louvre and other royal palaces, which the storyteller explores as he observes the behavior of the island’s inhabitants. Thus the novel combines the style of Menippean satire with the typical elements of travel journals, as the storyteller’s observations of the behavior and material culture of the “hermaphrodites” forms its narration.

The Setting

The first action the storyteller takes in this novel is to approach the palace he first encounters as he explores the island upon which he is shipwrecked, and which he already knows is called “the Island of Hermaphrodites.” While the description of this palace recalls aspects of some well-known French royal palaces, with the Caryatid columns evoking the sixteenth-century Louvre, the excessive and strange ornamentation signals a more utopian structure:

In the meantime, we went to contemplate a building fairly close to us, the beauty of which so ravished our spirits that we thought that it was an illusion rather than a real thing. Marble, jasper, porphyry, gold, and a variety of enamels were the least of it, for the architecture, the sculpture, and the order we saw encompassed in all its parts so drew the spirit into admiration that the eye, which can see so many things in one instant, was not sufficient to take in all that this beautiful palace contained.

[. . .]

We first found a long Peristyle or row of Caryatid columns, which had as their capitol the head of a woman; from there we entered into a great courtyard where the pavement was so lustrous and slippery that we could barely keep on our feet. Nonetheless the desire to continue made us stumble towards the great staircase, in front of which there was an entryway surrounded by twelve columns, accompanied by a formal doorway so superbly ornamented that it was impossible to contemplate it without being dazzled. Above its architrave an alabaster statue was visible, its body half-rising from the sea, which was pretty well depicted by various sorts of marble and porphyry. This statue was as well-proportioned as could be and held in one of its hands a scroll upon which was written the word Planiandrion.[33]

The architectural plenitude, filled with statues resembling humans, or at least parts of human bodies, is counterbalanced by the initial lack of living human inhabitants in this place. This is an ominous scene. Still, when the storyteller and his companions move past this façade, they do see a crowd of people. This disturbing moment underscoring lives not present serves as a reminder of the violence they have left behind.

The initial absence of inhabitants also raises the question of whether these representations of body parts are simply architectural adornments or whether they have a more memorial purpose. This question can also be raised relative to the architectural works of Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527–c.1607),[34] a Netherlandish artist and architect who was active during the period of the Wars of Religion in France and whose architectural engravings were disseminated in numerous editions throughout Europe well into the seventeenth century and would have been easily available to the author of The Island of Hermaphrodites.[35] Vredeman de Vries produced a large quantity of beautiful but disturbing architectural drawings as well as perspective exercises. These designs constitute impossible models for construction and almost never represent an actual building; in this sense, they can be seen as utopian (in the sense of existing nowhere) buildings rather than any representation of the real, just as The Island of Hermaphrodites represents a utopian society that has no actual geographic or historical location. These engravings also play with perspective, signaling the illusion of reality that this technique enables and underscoring “painting’s incapacity to adequately represent something not there.”[36] Yet, even as they underscore their own distance from reality, these works also gesture towards the horrifying reality of religious violence at the end of the sixteenth century.

The exaggerated perspective in these works both pulls the viewer in towards the vanishing point and creates a profound sense of disorientation, because of the impossibility of the scene as well as because of the off-center positioning of the scene and its viewer. These scenes are also largely empty of live human bodies, but body parts peek out of many locations (and the more you look, the more of them you see), sometimes looking at you looking at them. The effect of this work is thus both beautiful and terrifying.

 

Figure 1: Scenographiae, 16: Johannes of Lucas von Doetechum after Hans Vredeman de Vries, Hieronymous Cock (publisher), Scenographiae sive perspectivae, plate 16, 1563. Engraving, 209mm × 256mm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Orn Cat I 163.18.

 

Figure 2: Scenographiae, 18: Johannes of Lucas von Doetechum after Hans Vredeman de Vries, Hieronymous Cock (publisher), Scenographiae sive perspectivae, plate 18, 1563. Engraving, 211mm × 260mm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Orn Cat I 163.20.

 

Figure 3: Scenographiae sive perspectivae, plate 19: Johannes of Lucas von Doetechum after Hans Vredeman de Vries, Hieronymous Cock (publisher), 1563. Engraving, 206mm × 263mm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Orn Cat I 163.21

Vredeman de Vries’s works have been enormously influential from the seventeenth century to the present day in the domains of architectural and set design and on early modern and modern city planning. His work also inscribes itself into the context of classical theatre, as the title of one of his works on perspective (Scenographiae) indicates and as Barbara Uppenkamp notes.[37] Uppenkamp remarks on the link between tragedy and “the grand style of rhetoric” as well as “the superior subjects of mythology, history, and religion.” She points out that these subjects “were regarded as examples of moral or political conduct” and that classical architecture set the stage for this moral exemplarity. Highly decorated architecture was not only ornamental but also charged with moral and political meaning.

What remains elusive, both in The Island of Hermaphrodites and in the work of Vredeman de Vries, is what that meaning is. In an era of violent political and religious upheaval, one in which the usual tragic figures (kings, princes, and generals) have no moral standing as they have become a threat to their own people, the usual architectural and social orders do not serve this straightforward exemplary purpose. This is clear in the final image in Vredeman de Vries’s Theatre of Human Life,[38] called “Ruin” (“Ruyne”), in which there is only “the absence of an order.”[39]

 

Figure 4: Theatrum vitae humanae, plate 6 (“Ruyne”): Johannes Wierix, after Hans Vredeman de Vries, Peeter Baltens (publisher), 1577. Engraving, 209mm × 272mm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, RP-P-1939-329.

In The Island of Hermaphrodites, as in the works of Vredeman de Vries, formerly didactic performances and scenes take on multiple, contradictory roles, both presenting social and architectural norms and subverting them. This subversion integrates desire as elicited by vision as a motivating force tightly linked with the violent subtext of historical events that were supposed to remain buried but continue to reveal themselves everywhere. This violence, and the calm scenes of pleasure that Vredeman de Vries also produced, are tightly conjoined, with the dead bodies and severed heads transformed into architectural grotesques and caryatids in the “peaceful” images.

Just as the narration of The Island of Hermaphrodites is driven largely by the space in which it takes place and the movement of the storyteller through that space,[40] along with the daily routines of the people whom he encounters along the way, so the subversion of gender and genre norms, of social hierarchies and sovereign power, is fueled by the strange representations of these spaces and the things found in them. The storyteller encounters far more tapestries and furnishings than he does human beings and tends to remark on the material objects in the palace more than he does its human inhabitants. This tendency to focus on objects is underscored when he first sees one of the inhabitants as a statue:

In the middle of the bed one could see a statue of a man half out of the bed, wearing a bonnet made almost in the same form as those of little babies newly dressed [. . .]

His face was so white, so shiny, and of a red so striking, that one could well see that there was more artifice than nature involved, which led me easily to believe that this was only a painting.[41]

Here, and in the dressing scenes, human beings become part of the décor, sending complex messages about the connections and divisions between the material setting and the humans who inhabit it, as well as among various gender roles. The confusion between living beings and the material objects that frame them, between the ornamental parergon and the subject of representation is characteristic of the use of the grotesques in this period, as Heuer points out:

But there is a reverse to this idea of ornament as a cipher for (collective) identity, a reverse that Wölfflin himself later observed. This was the idea of ornament as a marker of individualism, of anomaly and difference—a role it often played in the late Renaissance. Grotesques, strapworks, hybrid monsters, vegetal homunculi, animalian nudes—this was the stuff of ornamentum, of ‘strangeness and variety,’ wrote Montaigne, ‘filling empty space.’ In court circles ornamental décor could speak a visual patois of secrecy and deviation.[42]

Frequently, both in Vredeman de Vries’s engravings and in The Island of Hermaphrodites, this grotesque ornamentation becomes the subject of the work, underscoring the centrality of that which we might think of as marginal. This shift in perspective underscores the craft of artistic and literary representation[43] and also signals the political significance of that which might otherwise be overlooked or deliberately buried.

Clothing and Gender in the French Court

The inhabitants of the island live in a decidedly material world. They do not believe in anything truly spiritual, including the immortal soul, heaven or hell, or any celestial divinity. They believe in a world of objects, and in fact create and recreate themselves by means of those objects. Thus the novel deploys a rich array of signs—architecture, clothing, language, laws, food—in the service of a pseudo-ethnography of a utopian or dystopian place, an island run by humans of indeterminate or unstable gender. These people live in a luxurious palace, spend much of the day getting dressed, have strange laws that seem to overturn or mock French laws and customs, eat unrecognizable food, and constantly reinvent themselves, in part through their ever-changing fashions. The palace itself seems to change around them, as the storyteller returns several times to the room through which he entered it and finds this room to be different each time.

The capacity of the setting to be constantly transformed echoes the propensity of the “hermaphrodites” to create their own identities by means of clothing. Clothing was essential in this period for communicating information about rank or social status, as well as gender. Sumptuary edicts in France dictated who could wear cloth of gold or silver, as well as jewelry made of gold, silver, and precious stones, silk clothing, and other expensive materials such as lace. These edicts indicate that an increasingly wealthy bourgeoisie, particularly merchants, were wearing these items and thus blurring established lines of social caste.[44] They also imply that identity could be shaped, at least in part, by means of clothing. This is a recurrent theme in the novel, one played on in the detailed descriptions of various robes, waistcoats, shirts, collars, and shoes. We rarely see even a small part of the body of the “hermaphrodites,” and so the clothing comes to define their fluid identities far more than any bodily appearance. The novel thus describes almost every piece of clothing and every accessory in loving detail, from underwear to waistcoats, ruffs, sleeves and cuffs, shoes, stockings, hats, gloves, fans, parasols, and ornamental swords.[45]

The novel signals from the beginning that clothing is a deceptive sign. The first “hermaphrodite” the storyteller sees is wearing a bed jacket of white satin, lined with a material that resembles the silk velvet that was often used at the time in place of fur and covered in sequins instead of real jewels:

I saw that they went straight to a large and spacious bed, which, with the space it left between itself and the wall, took up a good portion of the room [. . .] He sat up, still sleepy, and right away they put a little coat of white satin studded with sequins and lined with a material resembling silk velvet on his shoulders.

I had not yet seen who was in the bed, because neither the hands nor the face was visible. But the one who had put the coat on him came right away to lift a linen cloth that hung very low over the face, and to take off a mask that was not made of fabric, nor was it in the manner of those worn ordinarily by ladies, because it was made of shiny and tightly woven material [. . .][46]

The storyteller can see no part of the person who is in this bed because the face is covered with a veil and a mask, and the hands are gloved. But the material with which the coat is made already signals deception. In this passage, the storyteller assumes this figure is male, using mainly masculine pronouns, such as celuy qui estoit dans le lict [he who was in the bed].[47] He does become confused when this person complains, and then admits his ignorance of what lies before him: “I had not yet seen who was in the bed” [Je n’avois encore veu ce que c’estoit qui estoit dans ce lict].[48] The odd grammar of this passage, with its initial use of ce que, which means “that which,” underscores the ambiguity of qui, which can designate a subject that is human, a non-human animal, or inanimate, thus further confusing the categories of human and non-human.

This blurring of categories is echoed by confusion concerning the gender of the person being observed. When the storyteller sees a beard on this person’s face, he returns to using masculine pronouns, and when he returns to this room later in the novel and sees this “hermaphrodite” once more, he alternates between masculine and feminine pronouns, using le visage [the face] as the antecedent for the masculine, and ceste idole [this idol][49] for the feminine. By the end of the novel, he designates the inhabitants of the island by the doubly gendered honorifics of either Syredones or Seigneursdames [Lordladies]. The indeterminacy of gender signaled by this use of compound nouns is also underscored by the elaborate clothing of the “hermaphrodites.”

The sartorial practices of the “hermaphrodites” reflect a blurring of gender lines in the use of particular articles of clothing during this period in France. Whereas certain materials were seen as more feminine, such as lace, the difficulty of fabrication and the relative scarcity of this material made it a sought-after element in clothing for male courtiers as well. Men’s increasingly elaborate ruffs often resembled those of women, even if the other forms of adornment that surrounded the ruffs were generally less elaborate than those worn by women.

Lace was extremely time-consuming to make in this period, and so was extremely expensive and a sign of a certain social status. The popularity of this form of adornment is evident from the number of lace pattern-books published in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when lacework and ruffs both flourished as status symbols for the nobility and the very wealthy merchant class. Lacework had become increasingly elaborate over the course of the sixteenth century, with Italian pattern books published from the 1540s onwards offering the technical innovation of cutwork designs.[50] Catherine de’ Medici brought a Venetian lacemaker, Federico de Vinciolo, to France; his pattern-books, published at least nine times between 1587 and 1623, dominated lacemaking in and around the French court during the reigns of Henri III and Henri IV.[51] Vinciolo’s patterns emphasized cutwork (point coupé), and his work may have been familiar to the author of The Island of Hermaphrodites, who discusses cutwork at some length in the dressing scene. Cutwork is lace made on a piece of fabric, generally linen, from which parts of the fabric have been cut away in patterns, then edged in embroidery-like stitches.[52]

Collars and ruffs could frame the face or distract from it. Cutwork could reveal desirable parts of the body and cover any flaws or defects, thus “managing” what the observer could see. The dressing scenes in the novel emphasize the artificiality of appearances modified by the clothing, which at first seems to overwhelm the person being dressed. The collar is heavily starched, as the reference to parchment suggests. The act of dressing the “hermaphrodite” is compared to torture:

Once this shirt was put on, the collar was immediately turned up in such a way that you might have said that the head was waiting in ambush. They brought him a doublet, on which there was a sort of little body armor to make the shoulders even, because he had one higher than the other, and right away the one who had given him the doublet turned down the large collar made of cutwork that I described above. I would have almost thought that it was made of some very white parchment, it made so much noise when it was handled. It was necessary to turn the collar down to such a precise length, that they had to raise and lower the poor Hermaphrodite until it was just right; you would have said that they were torturing him. When this was finally in the form that they desired, it was called the gift of the rotunda.[53]

Details of the clothing suggest that the “hermaphrodite” is being created as a beautiful object, an object of desire. The “body armor” is a corset, generally made of iron, to shape the torso in a uniform manner and straighten the posture, thereby normalizing any notable differences in the body (here leveling the shoulders). In the end, the body resembles an architectural construction, with the allusion to a rotunda evoking the large ruffs and collars that often surrounded the head.

The aesthetics of this framing of the body evoke a statue-like quality in the flesh that is revealed:

This doublet had a bit of a décolletage in front, as did the shirt, so as to show off the whiteness and smoothness of the chest; but beyond this opening, one also saw some cutwork lace through which the flesh appeared, so that this diversity made the object more desirable.[54]

The description of this dressing ceremony also would seem to suggest that the individual is constructed by his clothing:

After he was put together, someone came to turn up the large, embroidered sleeves that covered one-fourth of the arm, while another arranged the lace of the collar quite meticulously, because it had to be raised up in order to roll it better.

I also forgot to tell you that there was another collar attached to the collar of the doublet, of a different color than that of the doublet, cut out and puffed up everywhere, which folded and turned up in such a way that the collar of the shirt came over it, and it extended far out from the body of the doublet.[55]

The depiction of these items of clothing in very architectural terms links the inhabitants of the island to the constructions all around them. The elaborate layers of clothing such as the multiple collars of the waistcoat and shirt are the focus of the storyteller’s attention, as if the body is only a mannequin on which the clothes are displayed. Even in the description of the revealing cutwork, cited above, the body is called “flesh” and the “thing” (la chose) that is seen, thereby effacing its humanity.

There are hints at normativity in these descriptions as well, as clothing is used to disguise anatomical differences such as uneven shoulders, and as the poor “hermaphrodite” is raised and lowered to fit into his clothing, rather than the clothing being made to fit him. This sort of representation is contradicted in other moments, when clothing is made tighter or looser according to the size of the individual,[56] and when the storyteller sees chairs that adjust to the size of the person sitting in them.[57] This underscores a tension between the normative and non-normative aspects of the text.[58]

Pleated or gadrooned (à godrons) ruffs (called fraises in French)[59] were very much in fashion in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century France. The most important “hermaphrodite” on the island, visited by the others in his bedchamber, is wearing such an elaborate ruff in bed and protests when they approach him too closely (vous me gastez ma fraize [you are ruining my ruff]).[60] Ruffs varied greatly from year to year, as styles came and went, and over time became more and more elaborate. In a court where many of the men were scarred from the numerous battles of the religious wars, ruffs became of way of framing these signs of warlike masculinity, as well as a way of covering them up. Too much lace on the ruff could be seen as feminizing, although the distinction between women’s ruffs and men’s was not always clear.

Henri III of France was often accused of feminine dress and behavior. His elaborate ruffs and hats were particularly noticed by the authors of satirical pamphlets. His mode of dress was evidently less sober than that of Henri de Guise; while it was not unusual for the king to be more richly dressed than even his noble subjects, this contrast was used against Henri III in many political pamphlets. This negative response to Henri III’s ornate clothing is evoked in the frontispiece of the novel.

However, several decades later, Henri IV was portrayed as wearing a lacy collar quite similar to one worn three decades earlier by Henri III. While Henri III was accused of effeminacy because of his clothing, seen as resembling women’s clothes, Henri IV’s very similar attire was then deemed masculine. This speaks to both the changing nature of fashion in early modern France and the changing attitudes towards dress and behavior as signs of masculinity.

These representations of fashion signal a few things: fashion was used to cover defects or flaws and to manage the spectacle that the individual was presenting to his public. This management frequently involved gesturing towards the defect, particularly if it was a wound inflicted in battle during the Wars of Religion, in order to reinforce the appearance of manliness. But too much visibility of a less than perfect body might disqualify one’s authority, so this management was complicated, something like the game of peek-a-boo that the cutwork lace suggests. Fashion also signals more or less manliness, more or less femininity, thus signaling in itself the potential for a spectrum of gender, an idea much speculated on in this period. The question of luxury and excess is also present in these representations of clothing and raises the question of class distinctions signaled through clothing. These distinctions become problematic as wealthy merchants begin to wear items previously reserved to the nobility. Clothing both signals ability, gender, and class and also subverts these categories, becoming an unreliable sign of the body and its status in the late sixteenth century.

The Laws

After the storyteller is prevented from entering the wardrobe in the chamber of the most important “hermaphrodite,” where the “most secret councils” are held and the most private business discussed, he is led through a gallery full of paintings towards another room where other curiosities are displayed.[61] These curiosities include chairs that can be made longer or wider, be lowered or raised on springs, to suit the sitter. The objects face a row of statues representing the heroes of the “hermaphrodites”: Marc Antony, Nero, Otho, and Vitellius (all Romans who held power but who were accused of being too focused on pleasure), the medical authority Galen, Nero’s lover Sporus, Demetrius the actor, Apicius, the Roman author of a cookbook well-known in sixteenth-century France, Ganymede, Hermaphroditus (in the Aristotelian form of a man on one side, and woman on the other), the Assyrian emperor Sardanapalus, and the Roman emperor Heliogabalus.

Next to the statue of Heliogabalus is a reading desk holding a large book containing all the laws and customs of the inhabitants of the Island. Since the dinner hour is approaching, and our poor storyteller cannot possibly read the whole book, his guide takes pity on him and pulls out a printed summary of the most important laws from a cupboard where it is stored with satires and other similar forms of poetry.

Their proximity to the statue of Heliogabalus, known in the sixteenth century for his dissolute life, warns the reader that the laws themselves will be of questionable character. Pleasure is written all over these laws, even those laws concerning religion: “The greatest sensuality shall be taken in this Empire to be the greatest sanctity.”[62] The laws themselves are divided up into sections on religious ordinances, articles of faith, laws concerning the legal system itself and the role of royal and state officials (la justice),[63] public policy (la police),[64] social rules (l’entregent),[65] and military laws (loix militaires).[66] These laws range from being anti-laws, that is to say the reverse of laws that existed at the time, to clever parodies that play on the hypocritical nature of certain edicts or ordinances. Many of the latter underscore the limitations on what the average person can do, while the king and his court are left unfettered by those limitations; these laws are often focused on excessive expenditures (for example, in many sumptuary laws, as mentioned above) or a troubling waste of resources (as in the ordinances concerning logging).

Religion

The laws begin as what might seem like straightforward satire, with a condemnation of the Roman emperors Trajan, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and Severus, known for their creation of just laws and legal systems. The documentation of the “hermaphrodites’” laws is then justified as necessary to prevent the eradication of their culture.[67] The list of laws begins with language parodying that of royal edicts: “By our very certain knowledge, full power and authority, we have established, instituted, and decreed, and we establish, institute, and decree that which follows.”[68] The bombast of this royal formula is undercut by the irreverent ordinances concerning religion that follow: “May the ceremonies of Bacchus, and Cupid, and Venus be continually and religiously observed here, all other religions banished in perpetuity, unless it is for the purposes of greater pleasure.”[69] Religious hypocrisy is valued as a cover for debauchery: “We advise all of our subjects, when they encounter those who make a big deal of piety, which should be as rarely as possible, to speak with great zeal of religious devotion.”[70] These religious laws thus serve as the foundation of all others, and represent the fundamental beliefs of the “hermaphrodites”: pleasure is more important than anything else, including virtue and reason, and appearances are more important than genuine adherence to values of any kind.

Yet these religious laws are rather vague, rarely touching on theological issues that were controversial during the period of religious wars. The pagan sensuality of the “hermaphrodites” is emphasized, as are their hypocrisy and irreverence, but the laws concerning religion are not as detailed as other laws, nor do they seem to be as pointedly directed at specific laws or behaviors as those in some of the other sections. Perhaps the author was trying to avoid revealing any particular religious sympathies.

The “hermaphrodites” choose rather to emphasize questions of etiquette in church. The answer to the question of whether or not to keep one’s hat on depends on the effect it might have on an elaborate hairdo. The laws debate whether one should kneel, more for the desired effect on others than for any religious reason, or what sort of book to read, with preference given to one about sensual love or pleasure.[71] One should flirt with lovers in church, with a “sacred band of Thebes” encouraging each other to feats of lust. Pretty words should have more of an effect than holy water on those attending services.[72]

Another concern of the “hermaphrodites” is holy days, which should all be devoted to bacchanals and which can take place every day of the year. This detail reveals the potential dual nature of “hermaphroditic” laws, as it mocks the numerous feast days, saints’ days, and holy days in the Catholic Church as well as the frequent partying of the nobility.[73] This novel seems to take on the self-indulgent excesses of the wealthy and powerful in both the Church and the State.

Some of the laws are meant to be shocking. The inhabitants of the island seem to be what we would call agnostic, but what would have been considered atheist and heretical in early modern France: “Let no one have any thought of death, or trouble their spirit, as to whether there is another life.”[74] Other laws seem simply silly, such as the law declaring that “The ordinary ministers of the temple will be singers, dancers, actors, and comedians, and all those of the same cloth.”[75] The readings during religious ceremonies consist of love poetry by Ovid, Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius. The “hermaphrodites” refuse any set religious hierarchy, preferring to elevate those who are most eloquent at expressing “the most secret mysteries of love.”[76]

Other laws focus on corruption, particularly the sale and assignment of religious benefices (domains or institutions such as abbeys or priories that generate revenue), often to wealthy laymen who pay a portion of the revenue from these benefices to a cleric who can perform the religious duties required.[77] The “hermaphrodites” also encourage conversion of members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy to their decidedly non-religious ways, exempting them from knowledge of or belief in the Scriptures.

While much of the text of these laws seems to focus on Catholic practices and institutions, the “Articles of Faith”[78] mimic Protestant confessions of faith, litany-like lists of the fundamental beliefs of a particular Protestant sect. The best-known of these is the Calvinist “Confession de Foi,”[79] often known as the “Confession de La Rochelle,” after the most important Protestant stronghold in France. The phrase that precedes so many of the articles of this confession of faith, Nous croyons [We believe], is turned by the “hermaphrodites” into something close to its opposite, Nous ignorons [We do not know]. The original confession states the belief in one God, whose existence and will is made manifest in the Bible and who is three beings in one. It also states that the first man, Adam, was created pure, but that Adam’s sin caused his descendants to be born sinful and that Christ was sent to save mankind from this sin.

While the forty articles of the Confession of La Rochelle go into quite a bit of detail as to the precise nature of God, his creation, and man’s sin and salvation, the articles of faith of the “hermaphrodites” are reduced to eight fundamental points of ignorance. The “hermaphrodites” do not know about creation, redemption, justification, and damnation, thus erasing most of Christian doctrine in one short phrase. They do not know of any temporality or eternity; they do not know of any other God but Love (Amour) and Bacchus. They do not know of any providence superior to human things, and believe only in random chance. Temporal pleasure is their paradise; they do not know of any other life but the present one. They know of no spirit other than that which is made visible by their passions (thus introducing sexual innuendo into their theology). They do not know that earthly things serve heavenly purposes. The text associates these beliefs with Gnosticism: “This is why we hold as folly any other communion than that which is found in our assemblies, which we believe cannot be maintained by any other means than the ancient doctrine of the Gnostics.”[80] But these beliefs seem more in line with satirical representations of early seventeenth-century libertinage, a philosophical movement inspired by Michel de Montaigne’s famous question, “What do I know?” (Que sçay-je?).[81] These articles cleverly avoid a statement of non-belief or a potentially heretical statement of belief by invoking ignorance. This refusal of dogmatic belief—or, rather, of the imposition of any particular dogmatic belief—was the domain of a group of leaders known as the “Politiques,” who proposed religious toleration as a solution to end the violence of the Wars of Religion.[82]

Justice

The section on religious laws is followed by a series of what we would understand to be judicial laws or, rather, the reverse of most laws that would be familiar to sixteenth-century readers. And so, homicide and its variants patricide, matricide, and fratricide are not crimes if they benefit the person committing them. Adultery should be not only legal but also fashionable, as should rape, incest, and child trafficking.[83] It is hard to untangle the dystopian aspect of these anti-laws from actual practices during the Wars of Religion, when all forms of violence, including sexual violence, were used to intimidate or even eradicate populations.

In this context, the law concerning duels seems strangely mild, urging the king’s subjects to engage in them as rarely as possible,[84] to avoid striking each other, and to break them off at the first hint of violence. This law follows closely upon those permitting homicide and familial violence, marking a contrast with them in its weak attempt to reduce violence. While the novel takes on aspects of both Henri III’s and Henri IV’s courts elsewhere, there is no reference to the most infamous duel of the period, the duel des mignons, in which six of Henri III’s close courtiers faced each other in an inexplicably violent combat, resulting in the death of four of them. This deadly encounter took place just months after a decree requiring arbitration in matters that could lead to dueling. As François Billacois notes, “Clearly these preventive measures were ‘very badly observed,’ even in the milieu where the authority and power of the monarch were most immediately felt.”[85] Decades after this event, works on dueling bemoan the senseless loss of lives in this particular duel.[86] Perhaps it was hard to wring satire out of such senseless violence.

Many of these laws also have a strangely subversive quality to them. For example, numerous laws involve the status and function of the family, but one law actually erases family relations entirely:

We do not intend at all that there be among our subjects any degrees of consanguinity, except in matters of goods and possessions, and for this consideration we have maintained the names of brother, sisters, uncle, nephew, first cousin, and others. We do not believe that in consideration of blood anyone can say that they belong to one family rather than another, because of the multitude of fathers that everyone might have, and the suppositions that could be made. This is why we abolish from now on and forever these names of father, mother, brother, sisters, and others, and so wish that only those of Monsieur, Madame, or others of similar honor, be used, according to the custom of various countries.[87]

If the familial identities of father, mother, and brother (etc.) do not exist, then how can one kill family members? An exception is made in the case of property, but the law seems even to undermine this use of familial identity, as it remarks that everyone could have a “multitude of fathers.”[88] The laws then call for legitimation of children born out of wedlock, and go on to mock marriage as a “ridiculous thing” altogether.[89] The laws of the “hermaphrodites” particularly promote the freedom of women to choose their own sexual partners, without deferring to their husbands. This is a reversal of legal practices in this period, as a husband could do as he wished with little fear of punishment, and a wife convicted of sexual misbehavior would generally be severely punished. Since marriage—with the father, the patriarch, being the ruler of the family—was considered the basis and model for the French monarchy, this freedom would have been seen as particularly revolutionary.[90]

Further breakdown of civil society is marked by permission given to borrow from others without ever repaying them, and to steal outright.[91] As for resolving disputes, the richest person involved in them should always win.[92] Given the officially sanctioned role of bribery in the justice system of late sixteenth-century France, this seems more like a reflection of actual practices than a satirical exaggeration.[93] This corruption extends to those responsible for the royal finances, who use their authority to line their own pockets.[94] Those closest to the Prince should also be the agents of other princes, and treason in one’s personal interest is favored over loyalty.[95] This last law seems to reflect the fraught relationship between Henri III and his archrival, Henri de Guise, who had pretentions to the throne of France.[96]

The laws in this section thus take on a dual role, both suggesting a fictional society where the traditional patriarchal family has disintegrated and corruption at court is the norm and offering details that reveal actual disintegration and corruption in late sixteenth-century France. The frequent use of hyperbole may lull readers into a sense that these laws are merely imaginary, but precise vocabulary brings them back to confront the reality of many of these issues. What makes them really elusive is their frequently contradictory nature, evident in the conjunction of laws concerning familial violence and those eliminating family relationships altogether. In this case, the laws simply cancel each other out. The only common ground in all of these laws is venality. Committing crimes or perverting justice for money is laudable, according to the laws of this land; this seems to be a criticism that would have purchase even today.

Policy

The section on policy takes on a number of actual edicts and ordinances of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in detail. Once again, reversal of existing laws is a frequent strategy. What is added to this is wordplay, innuendo, and even nonsense that seems to call into question the bases of these laws and the possibility of a functional state. This section begins with weights and measures, calling for reformers and officials who are responsible for carrying out royal policy to allow false weights and measures, and similar means of cheating customers. This first rule seems to be mocking Henri IV’s attempts to appoint officials to oversee weights and measures used in commerce.[97]

The second law is one that resonates differently with the reigns of Henri III and Henri IV: “The said officers will also permit all defamatory speeches and booklets against the honor of the Prince and his Estate.”[98] Many pamphlets against Henri III were printed during his reign, and many speeches were given inciting violence against him; there was little his officers could do to stem this tide of propaganda. Henri IV’s officers gathered and burned anti-monarchical books and pamphlets, even those against Henri III, but sometimes the king himself permitted an author to go free. The author of The Island of Hermaphrodites himself escaped prosecution only because of the leniency of Henri IV.

The laws then turn to questions of bankruptcy, encouraging the protection of those who do not pay their debts.[99] The passages that follow combine satirical critiques in the form of reverse laws concerning profiteering from limited resources and strange wordplay that seems to call for the readers more focused attention on these problems. The first law concerns hoarding of wheat and wine in times of famine:

The years when wheat and wine are more scarce than is customary, principally in countries where it is not to be found in very great quantity, we permit our subjects to fill storehouses with them and to distribute them only in extreme circumstances, in order to draw more easily the bad blood of the public that is directed at them during the years of abundance and by means of a subtle alchemy convert it into their wealth.[100]

Starving the peasants into submission to cure them of seditious feelings becomes a sort of alchemy that enriches the wealthy landowners.

The law that follows focuses on policies concerning forestry and logging, which had become pressing issues since these resources had been greatly diminished as the result of extensive building projects, both public and private. This law begins with a very extended pun, stating that since some ancient Romans were carried through the streets to the sound of flutes, so supporters of the “hermaphrodites” who live near forests should be allowed to play woodwinds—des haut-bois, literally oboes but also a pun on “high woods”—whenever they like.[101] This is most likely an obscure pun on the phrase haute futaie, the type of forest most protected from logging. This is what we would call “old growth” forests, and French forestry practices allowed the logging of these trees in principle only every hundred years (at the most frequent). Often these forests would be protected by the less valuable taillis, trees that were cut more regularly and were most often not the prized oaks, chestnuts, and beech trees.[102] But the long, straight trunks of the haute futaie were sought after for building projects, and so were valuable resources that were therefore quite threatened already in the sixteenth century. An ordinance promulgated by Charles IX in 1563 already expresses fear of over-exploitation of these forests and of the taillis, but also chillingly represents them only as resources for construction and for financial gain.[103]

The text then states that the supporters of the “hermaphrodite” cause should not have to distinguish between dead trees (bois mort) and non-fruit-bearing trees or trees of no value (mort bois).[104] Dead trees that were dried out could only be used for firewood. Trees considered to be of no value were trees that could be cut down for a range of everyday uses, as they neither bore any edible fruit or nuts nor were strong enough to use for building castles, churches, or ships. The trees for which logging was limited by law included not only trees we would now consider fruit-bearing but also oak, chestnut, and hazel trees, whose acorns or nuts could be used for human or animal consumption.[105]

The “hermaphroditic” version of this law then states that all trees felled by the wind can be used, adding, however, the perverse detail that these trees can also be felled by setting a fire at their base.[106] This law is hard to interpret, and thus evokes the complexities of various edicts and ordinances concerning forestry in the sixteenth century:

But we wish that all windfalls, whether someone has set their trunks on fire, or they have fallen in some other way, be wood they can keep for their own use, our intention being that all forests be of the same nature as the wood of Danaë, that is to say that the chief foresters can never mark them with the royal hammer.[107]

This reference is difficult to decipher. The French term for chief forester, gruyer, indicates that this is an officer of the king, responsible for protecting the king’s forest from theft. The trees marked by the king’s sign were supposed to be spared logging, either because they served as boundary trees to mark off what could be logged from what could not or because they were baliveaux, trees that had to be left to repopulate the forest. This practice is quite different from the marking of trees by merchants who were allowed to log in designated areas and would receive a particular hammer to mark the trees to be logged and sold from an authorized court. Without the king’s mark on trees, they would be vulnerable to logging and thus would be “the wood of Danaë,” raining gold on those cutting them down just as Zeus came to Danaë in a shower of gold.[108] This law, then, replaces a complex system of protection, in which different marks or combinations of marks gave trees different statuses, with complete permission to log at will. In this, it reflects the reality in the forests of France at the end of the sixteenth century rather than the laws being passed to protect the forests. As with many of the satirical laws in this novel, this law signals the dissolution of royal authority. In this case, the hypocrisy of Henri III himself may have contributed to the situation, as Michel Devèze notes that although Henri passed laws expressing concern for the excessive logging that was taking place during his reign, he authorized much of this logging in order to support the royal finances.[109]

The officers of the king are allowed by the laws of the “hermaphrodites” to prune trees for aesthetic reasons (émonder), clear forests (esserter, perhaps essarter),[110] or prune dead or diseased branches (élaguer), wherever is most useful for them (as opposed to being beneficial for the trees). The text then evokes the practice of allowing logging by the foot, already condemned as problematic:

And when a deal is afoot to order a certain number of feet of these trees, we wish that this order not be taken literally,[111] as one commonly takes it, but according to their own understanding: that is, to count as many trees for a foot, as one ordinarily counts inches to compose a Royal foot.[112]

A Royal foot is somewhat longer than twelve inches. The more frequent abuse of logging by the foot was taking only the best trees and leaving the surrounding forest devastated. This was the practice that led to the reform that permitted logging by anyone other than the king only in areas not marked off by trees bearing the sign of the king, in order to limit the area of forest affected.[113] While the text is dominated by puns here, the length of the passages dealing with forestry seems to indicate a genuine interest in the problem of excessive logging. This is not surprising, given that the loss of forests in the late sixteenth century disturbed even contemporary observers.[114]

The final section of the laws concerning forestry permits the officers of the lowest rank to make deals with laborers living near the forest, allowing them to take the best trees for ordinary building purposes such as shingles or siding.[115] This is precisely forbidden by the edict promulgated by Charles IX in 1563 (cited above), which forbids the use of old growth oak, chestnut, or beech forests for ordinary use. The closing accusation that the forests are being exploited for money to fund drunkenness echoes the emphasis on parties in this novel but also signals the frivolity with which the forests were being destroyed in this period.

The laws that follow are simply reverse laws. One abolishes censorship,[116] which was the opposite of what was happening in the period of the Wars of Religion, as laws like the ordinance of Moulins in 1566 prohibited the publishing of defamatory books, not just theologically or medically suspect books (censorship of books in these last two categories was the domain of the University of Paris).[117] Another allows either the husband or the wife to divorce if they merely wish to do so.[118] Yet another calls for the execution of anyone wishing to speak on behalf of the public good.[119]

Another law clearly reverses the numerous sumptuary laws of the day (discussed above in the section on clothing):

Everyone will be able to dress as they fancy, provided that it be sumptuously, superbly, & without any distinction or consideration for their status or wealth. If a fabric being used, as precious as it might be, is not enriched with a superfluity of gold or silver embroidery, precious stones and pearls, and frequently without any propriety, we hold such garments to be vile, cheap, and unworthy of being worn in good company, holding any modesty in this for a baseness of heart and a lack of spirit. We also hold as an almost general rule among ourselves, that such attire honors more than it is honored: for on this Island the habit makes the monk, and not the contrary.[120]

A series of royal edicts produced over the course of the sixteenth century forbade the wearing of cloth of gold or silver, embroidery, lace, borders, silk, or velvet by all but the royal family. These laws offered a striking contrast to the excessive expenditures of the Court itself.[121] While these sumptuary laws were aimed at enforcing strict social hierarchies, the “hermaphrodites’” version allows everyone to reinvent themselves by means of clothing. This law is echoed a few pages later in an even more playful manner: “Each person will also be able to dress as they fancy, however bizarre the design might be. . .”[122]

Feminine clothing is valued above any other style, and the fashions should change constantly.[123] To this end, everyone should have a personal tailor.[124] Even the furnishings should be as extravagant as possible, gilded and covered with silk wherever possible, especially the beds, which should be richly covered with silk and be placed on Turkish carpets sold in Egypt (cairins).[125] Lavish banquets shall be held, with even the omelets, dusted with musk, amber, and crushed pearls, reflecting the excesses of court dining.[126]

Charity should only be exercised as a means of keeping up appearances with the outside (non-“hermaphrodite”) world.[127] Children should be educated in a way that leaves them free and does not constrain or discipline them in any way; they should learn about pleasure instead, so that they might grow up to be excellent “hermaphrodites.”[128] Poetic academies and contests (jeux floraux) are to be maintained as the best means of educating the youth in the doctrines of this culture.[129] Hospitals and clinics will be admired not for the help they can offer to those in need but for the money they can make for the wealthy and the comforts they can offer them.[130] Beggars will not be arrested or prosecuted, even if they are faking illness or injury, as long as they bribe the officers who would otherwise arrest them.[131] Pickpockets, thieves, and other criminals should also be safe from officers of the law by the same means (passing on some of their gains to these officers).[132] Slander and treason should not be punished; on the contrary, those who practice these forms of betrayal should be honored and admired.[133] Alchemy, which is linked to forgery in this novel, should be studied by everyone, including officers of the state, who should be well versed in alloys.[134] Those who have mastered fashion and other useless trades and wasting vast amounts of wealth are to be the most admired in this society.[135] The final law states that, since the admirable men of classical antiquity no longer exist, nor will other men of honor be found, immigrants will be welcome to the land of the “hermaphrodites” so long as they are corrupt.[136] If they stay, they can receive all of the honors of those who are citizens by birth, but they are free to go if they think they can pursue better opportunities elsewhere.

These laws oscillate between a satirical critique of the dystopian corruption at the Court and all over France and a utopian vision of a life of pleasure and of freedom from constraint.

Social Relations

The next series of laws focuses significantly on language, as well as appearance and etiquette. The instability of the language in the land of “hermaphrodites” was already evident in the early scenes of the novel, in which the rulers are awakened and dressed in a parody of the ceremony known as the lever du roi [the rising of the king]. As they greet one of the powerful leaders, the language in which the courtiers address this person destabilizes binary gender, an important principle of organization for French:

To this bedside went the three people I have described above, and they began to invoke this idol by names that cannot be well represented in our language, because the entire language and all of the terms of the Hermaphrodites are the same as those which Grammarians call the common gender, and are linked as much to the male as to the female.[137] Nonetheless, since I desired to know what conversations they were having there, one of their retinue, to whom I had sidled up, and who knew Italian well, told me that they were extending a thousand praises to her perfections, and that among other things, they were strongly praising the beauty and whiteness of her hands.[138]

The language of the “hermaphrodites” cannot be translated into French because of this refusal of binary gender. Here the novel is evoking the concept of nouns with common gender, which can be either masculine or feminine. Such nouns are present in Latin, but French has reduced all nouns to either masculine or feminine gender.[139] In fact, the Latin language has four genders: masculine, feminine, common, and neuter (echoed by Ambroise Paré’s categories of the hermaphrodite). French has two; the language of the “hermaphrodites” only one all-inclusive gender. Our storyteller finds a courtier who knows Italian, who explains what the others are saying. In fact, in this passage, the gender identity of the person being addressed is unstable, and the storyteller presents them sometimes with masculine pronouns, sometimes with feminine ones. This passage thus tightly links grammatical gender and human gender identity, even while it is calling these structures into question.

Later, the storyteller will find an interlocutor who speaks Latin and who will lead him into a gallery of curiosities, where he will encounter the laws of the “hermaphrodites.”[140] These laws describe a language that is consistently double in its function, offering both an evident meaning and a coded meaning that is quite different. The inhabitants of the island are encouraged to make words up, but all words should have these two meanings:

By grace and special privilege, we also wish that it be permitted to our subjects to invent terms and words necessary for civil conversation, which will generally have two meanings: one representing to the letter that which they desire to say, the other a mystical sense of pleasure, which will only be understood by their own kind or by those who have been their foot soldiers.[141] We add this requirement, that the sound be sweet in pronouncing them for fear of offending their delicate ears, with prohibitions against using others, whatever substance, property, or signification they might have of what one wishes to say. And so that continual use cannot result in any annoyances, we judge that it is appropriate that they change these terms every year, so that if in the long run the common people wish to use them, our subjects can still have their own particular language.[142]

Here, language is doubly unstable, with new terms being invented every year and with each term having two different meanings. In this double and mobile nature, this language thus evokes the variations of gender evident in the novel. Gender joins the masculine and the feminine, thus creating a doubled identity, but it is also mobile in its expression, taking on different roles for different purposes.

Language also supports and undermines communication, having one meaning for the uninitiated and another that is only understood in the circle of semblables (a term signaling “those people who are like us”). This word, which evokes language as a community-based and community-building practice, is difficult to sort out here. Who are the semblables and what do they resemble? Since their identity is based on appearances and since their appearances change constantly, the concept of a group of people who are like them offers infinite possibilities of identity and of meaning that oscillate between all meanings and utter meaninglessness. This refusal of fixed expression echoes the refusal of clear gender division.

The laws link disorderly language to disorderly conduct, thus threatening the stability of the state:

Inasmuch as our subjects have among themselves many plots, conspiracies, schemes, and secret undertakings, either for love or for the State, we have permitted and do permit them to have henceforth and forever some language or jargon composed according to their whim, which they will give some strange name, such as Mesopotamian, Pantagruelian, and others. They will also use signs instead of words, in order to be understood in their most secret thoughts by their fellow initiates without being discovered.[143]

Here the range of language becomes even broader, allowing even for signs to take the place of words. While the reference to Rabelais underscores the comic nature of this law, the insistent connection between language and civil order or disorder reveals the importance of language both as a tool of the state and a means of subverting it. The word fancy (fantaisie) links the work of the imagination to desire, and the instability of language to creative play and pleasure in defiance of social norms and political control.

It should not come as a surprise, then, that the next dozen or so laws focus on sexuality, flirtation, and other forms of love-play, including a suggestive list of games that might have served the purposes of seduction in the past but are also simply children’s games. The conclusion of this section of the laws then connects this seduction to power, but also to hypocrisy, as the good subjects and polite friends will always shape their desires and ideas to suit those of the person who might best advance their status, at least in words or appearance.[144] The ever-mobile and constantly transforming subjects shape themselves to suit those in power, but since this occurs only in hypocritical fashion, the result is a continual back and forth of power and resistance.

Military Laws

The section on military laws unites the multiple thematic threads of disorder, obsession with finances and particularly with financial gain, and false appearances. While works discussing the organization of the French army, which was significantly reformed in the sixteenth century, were readily available,[145] these laws seem to be more a direct criticism of the ruinous cost and abhorrent behavior of the royal army during the French Wars of Religion. At first, the laws list Roman military roles, suggesting the order and discipline of Roman armies, but this order vanishes with a refusal of differences in rank.[146]

The laws call for the army to have far more servants than soldiers in their ranks: “we wish that the multitude of valets and others be three times larger than the whole army put together.”[147] Soldiers will have an easy life, since they will be billeted in the “best villages”[148] in every region where they are present. This leads quickly to the dedication of soldiers to the “Goddess of Ransacking”[149] and from there the descriptions of the soldiers’ behavior devolves into accusations of robbery and torture of the villagers. These accusations are echoed by puns on the concept of a mobile camp or camp volant, since voler means both to fly and to rob.[150] This violence is encouraged the laws: “When they encounter resistance, we permit them to use breaking, burning, rape, and ransom, even when this is against our own subjects (on whom they should profit more).”[151] Thus the army, rather than maintaining social order, is a threat against the citizens of this kingdom.

These accusations of theft and violence deployed against the citizens of their own country continue, even as the laws insist that the soldiers themselves should face no risk of violence or privation. These laws place them above the law,[152] leaving them free to engage in crimes against the inhabitants of any town or city where their garrison might be located. The insistent theme of violence against the unarmed populace reflects the very real damage that various armies (royal and princely) inflicted during the period of religious conflict. As a result, this passage seems like the most serious and disturbing element of the novel, revealing the uses of disorder (a disorderly army) for the subjugation of a population and for the enrichment of both the army and its leaders. This denunciation gives a very different perspective on the complex interactions between power and resistance, suggesting the very high stakes of the behaviors described in other sections of the laws.

The Banquet: Galenic Dietetics and Court Life

The narration breaks off from the laws at this point, and the storyteller returns to his observations of court life in the land of the “hermaphrodites.” Although he is hungry, rather than going to eat with the servants, he persuades his guide to take him to observe a banquet that the “hermaphrodites” are about to attend. What follows is a detailed enumeration of royal tableware and of the food typically served at a royal or princely banquet. The dishes presented in this banquet and the order in which they are served reflect a particularly French take on a long tradition of dietetic advice based on the work of Galen (129–210 ad), one of the most influential medical practitioners, theoreticians, and authors of the ancient world, whose work on anatomy, physiology, pathology, and dietetics was widely disseminated and imitated in early modern Europe.

Galen’s presence was continual in sixteenth-century French medicine and indeed throughout early modern Europe.[153] His work on hygiene was published in Latin translation in Paris in 1526.[154] A Latin translation of his work on foods that generate good and bad humors was published in 1530,[155] and a translation of his other major work on food, De alimentorum facultatibus [On the Properties of Foodstuffs] was published in 1549.[156] Once these works became more readily available, they were quickly adapted: Charles Estienne’s De nutrimentis (On Food), published in 1550, is the best-known adaptation of Galen’s own work on the properties of food produced in France during this period, and conveyed Galenic ideas to a largely humanist audience.[157] Estienne supplements Galen’s advice with lists and descriptions reflecting contemporary habits and preferences: the list of wines focuses on varieties familiar to early modern French consumers, with local knowledge concerning their properties. Galenic dietary principles are adjusted to the environments and situations in which they are invoked.

The history of the régime de santé (health regimen, also known as hygiene) was associated from at least the thirteenth century with treatises on the education of princes, and therefore it had a significant political aspect. The régime de santé was thus a well-established genre by the sixteenth century in France, having been developed in Italian courts at the end of the Middle Ages. This body of work consisted largely of adaptations of Galen’s writings on hygiene and on the properties of foods, but the evolution of this material was extensive, as Arabic and European authors alike added their own perspectives to the sources.[158] These works linked physiology and morality. Good self-governance and good government were particularly represented as closely related in later versions of the régime de santé. In addition, some of these works presented national or regional cuisines and habits, as some authors believed that the régime de santé should vary in response to individual needs in different environments and with different food cultures.

The early modern régimes de santé returned to the Galenic textual sources themselves, newly translated into Latin and occasionally translated or adapted into French. Although his influence in the domain of anatomy had declined by the second half of the sixteenth century, Galen was “the most important and towering figure in the field of medicine and dietetics,” and the mid-sixteenth century (1530–1570) was a period of renewal for Galenic principles concerning diet and hygiene.[159] Galen’s work and all of its early modern adaptations are based on the Hippocratic concept of the humors, particularly on achieving an equilibrium of hot, dry, cold, and moist foods, with condiments, sauces, and spices used to help achieve this equilibrium.[160]

Sometimes dietary advice was combined with more pleasurable aspects of cuisine, as in De Honesta Voluptate et Valetudine by Platina [Bartolomei Sacchi],[161] which offers this advice along with recipes. But the medicinal nature of diet is more often presented in the context of the more expansive domain of dietetics, involving bodily regimens. In his work on hygiene, Galen lists the ways in which human life can be managed in order to improve health and functionality: that which is ingested (food, drink, medicine); that which is eliminated (secretions and excretions); bodily manipulation or movement (massage, exercise, sleep or waking, intercourse); environment. Galen’s list developed over time into the “six non-natural things”: “air and environment, food and drink, sleep and wakefulness, motion and rest, evacuation and repletion, and passions of the mind.”[162] These elements together constitute the early modern régime de santé, bringing the idea of self-governance to discussions of food and lifestyle. While self-governance was already discussed in the medieval versions of the genre, it takes on greater political significance in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century France.

What we might call public health also takes on much greater importance in the régime de santé of the late sixteenth century, and emphasis is given to the larger potential impacts on society of a good or bad regimen. This new emphasis coincides with French translations and adaptations that make Galen’s work more easily available.[163] Laurent Joubert and Gaspard Bachot made their discussions of diet and regimen even more widely accessible in their Erreurs populaires [Popular Errors].[164] At the same time, the political importance of the regimen becomes evident in French works on dietetics. For example, Nicolas-Abraham de La Framboisière’s treatise, Le gouvernement necessaire a chacun pour vivre longuement en santé [The Governance Necessary to Each Man, to Live a Long and Healthy Life], presents the good health of the individual and control of the individual body as essential to the well-being of the nation.[165] This linkage of personal hygiene to the health of the nation has had a long afterlife.

Joseph Du Chesne’s work on diet, Le Pourtraict de la santé [The Picture of Health],[166] ostensibly written for Henri IV, elaborates on the idea that good national governance is dependent on good bodily governance and good health. While Du Chesne evokes Galenic principles and categories of foods, he also emphasizes the flexibility and adaptability of the Galenic régime de santé. In particular, he discusses Gascon foods and lifestyles, thus invoking the king’s region of origin (and his own). Du Chesne, better known as a practitioner of Paracelsian alchemy and medicine, often recommended chemical cures for illnesses, yet “his basic discussion of nutrition and foodstuffs is otherwise not very different from those of other dietaries.”[167] Du Chesne’s work serves as a sort of mirror of court practices, but his advice was also very influential in its day, with advocacy for practices based on personal experience balancing the ideas taken from Galenic sources.[168]

The régime de santé has a moral as well as political significance in Du Chesne’s work, as is evident from the list of what he calls les perturbations de l’esprit [disturbances of the spirit] that introduces The Portrait of Health: ambition (presented as the worst of the vices), avarice, envy, lust, anger, joy, fear, and sorrow.[169] These vices intersect with the seven deadly sins of Christian tradition, but they also gesture toward the importance of controlling emotions in a volatile court. Diet thus becomes one means of exercising the self-control necessary for advancement and possibly even survival.

Du Chesne’s treatise, and the Galenic tradition of dietetics more generally, serve as important sources for satirical works in which diet reflects the excesses of political and religious leaders. The work of Rabelais offers a model for this use of dietetics in the description of Gargantua’s education, where the discussion of the properties of foods closely resembles Galen’s work on that subject and where the young prince’s daily exercises echo those described in Galen’s work on hygiene.[170] Later in the sixteenth century, the Protestant Satyres chrestiennes de la cuisine papale [The Christian Satires of the Papal Kitchen], published in Geneva in 1560, uses a Galenic list of foods[171] as images of the corruption of the Papal Court. This banquet begins with the eucharistic bread and wine, but then seems to be served in disorderly manner, without consideration for proper digestion or dietary rules.

At first glance in The Island of Hermaphrodites, the lavish banquet seems to remain in the vein of these satirical works directed at figures of authority and at the chaos they engender by their bad governance. As Todd Reeser has pointed out, in this novel, the king does not really rule, because anyone can take on the role of the king.[172] So at first, one might expect the lesson that an unregulated diet leads to social disorder. Yet the banquet described in The Island of Hermaphrodites seems to respect the advice given in dietary manuals about what dishes to serve and the order in which they should be served. The type of food, its mode of preparation and service, as well as musical accompaniment and leisure activities afterwards to promote digestion, reflect quite closely the advice offered in Du Chesne’s treatise, The Portrait of Health.[173] Strangely, the “hermaphrodites” seem to be following a strict set of dietary rules and practices that suggest a certain degree of self-control. The complication to this seemingly orderly behavior is that the genre of the régime de santé has become quite variable by the end of the sixteenth century, so that there is significant diversity and divergence of opinion as to what the ideal regimen might be. This suggests a notion of order that can alter to suit different circumstances and can thus support a resilient and flexible individual who can adjust his lifestyle as needed. Rather than disorder, The Island of Hermaphrodites might well be depicting a different kind of order, one based on the understanding that different strategies are needed in different contexts, not only allowing for diversity but also embracing it as a crucial aspect of good health.

The banquet scene in the novel begins with a description of the lavish tableware, suggesting excessive expenditure at the court of the “hermaphrodites.” The storyteller first describes a tablecloth draped down to the ground, as well as the additional tablecloths on top of that one, covered by a proliferation of tableware:

At the end of the lower part, there was a very long and fairly wide table, on which a large tablecloth was spread out and draped down to the ground: on this table, someone had placed a little staircase made of wood, of only four or five steps, which occupied the whole length of the table, and on this staircase, someone had spread out another cloth that covered each of its steps. I wondered in astonishment at what this ceremony might mean, but suddenly some people came to arrange many kinds of silver vessels on it: platters, chargers, plates, basins, vases, water pitchers, and all of them placed in very beautiful order, in such a way that this bore some resemblance to the altarpieces that are set up in our country on the feast of Corpus Christi.[174]

This tableware is placed in “very beautiful order,” suggesting that expenditure is not always a sign of disorder. Yet in some ways, the costly excesses of the tableware presage the wastefulness of the banquet to follow.

There are two aspects of the meal that seem to be even more striking to the storyteller than its excess: one is the supposedly exotic quality of what is on the table; and the other is the variety of choices. The storyteller is thus surprised to find ice and snow on the table, as if they are something of a novelty. The storyteller also underscores the variety of bread he finds in a large basket:

On the other side of this table there was a large basket, and in this basket many types of bread: one made with risen dough, the other with kneaded dough, yet another with leavening; one was soft, swollen, and salted, the other all flat and without salt; one was round, another long, another crescent-shaped; one smaller, the other a little larger. In short, there was bread of all ages and of all types.[175]

Du Chesne asserts in Le Pourtraict de la Santé that bread is the foundation of nutrition and the ideal form of food, particularly bread made from European wheat. So, on the one hand, it should not seem all that odd to encounter a large quantity of bread on an early modern table. On the other hand, the sheer variety of bread, even though each variety would have been fairly familiar to early modern tables, astounds our storyteller. It is telling that this list evokes Du Chesne’s discussion of the varieties of bread and their various properties,[176] suggesting that the novel is gesturing towards the dietary discussions of its day. It is also significant that the novel follows the order of food listed in Le Pourtraict (and in other Galenic manuals), starting with bread, as if to point the reader in the direction of these sources.

The storyteller also suggests the unnatural or disguised quality of everything he finds on the table, noting, for example, that the top tablecloth was folded to imitate rippling water:

And so, taking me by the hand, he led me to the other end of the room, where we found another table, already all prepared, the tablecloth being of a linen that was very daintily damasked. But inasmuch as in this country the things which are in their natural state, whatever degree of perfection they might have acquired, are not at all agreeable to them unless they are disguised, this cloth had been folded in a certain manner, so that it greatly resembled some rippling stream that a light wind raised gently up. For among the many little folds, one saw a lot of ruffles.[177]

This clever device frames a nef de table, or table ship, a particularly ornate and costly piece of tableware used in the medieval period to hold items used to detect poison in the king’s food, but used by the end of the sixteenth century in many wealthy households to hold napkins and cutlery. Nefs had become so prevalent by the mid-seventeenth century that Louis XIV was moved to forbid their use by anyone other than the king himself.[178]

 

Figure 5: The Burghley Nef, artist unknown, Paris, 1527–28; courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O73113/the-burghley-nef-salt-cellar-unknown/

Everything the storyteller notes in detail did in fact make an appearance at the French court, that of Henri IV as well as of Henri III. One example is the cadenas (a small box or tray, generally made of silver) that was used to hold cutlery at an individual’s place at the table.[179] From the folding chairs to the napkins, the storyteller finds all of these objects fascinating but also disorienting, as if profoundly unfamiliar.

He also presents the food as unfamiliar. The first course seems to be meat pâtés of some sort, so disguised as to be unrecognizable to the storyteller, even though they are (and were) quite habitually consumed in France: “The meats of this first course were so finely minced, cut up, and disguised, that they were unrecognizable.”[180] The second course is roast meats. The storyteller notes that these roasts are not wrapped in bacon, an omission he associates with Judaic practices:

Having in no way satisfied their great hunger in this first course (as we say in our jargon), the roast meat was brought with the same ceremony as the preceding course. They call this the second course. All of these meats were so sophisticated, either because of the sauces or because of the preparation, that I am certain I would bore you if I described it, along with the fact that I have forgotten about the better part of this course. I noticed only that several meats that we wrap in bacon in our country were not there; I thought that this omission was some Judaic custom.[181]

Perhaps the storyteller has forgotten about most of the meat course because there was nothing striking or novel about it. This would suggest that he is framing his account to highlight anything unusual, even if much of what he finds unusual was fairly ordinary at the beginning of the seventeenth century (pâtés, marinated fish, salads, cooked fruit). At any rate, his lapse in memory suggests that we are not being offered the full picture of this meal.

The “hermaphrodites” seem to have moderate appetites, and they turn away food: “the diners stopped only the passing dishes that they wanted and pushed away the rest.”[182] More striking is the sexualization of food through the language used to describe or present it. Some pastries seem to have odd names that evoke alchemy but also suggest an aphrodisiac effect: “Among these meats there were several pastries to which they had given alchemical names, such as excitation, erection, projection, multiplication, and other names signifying the nature and property of each thing.”[183] In this case, the names for these pastries seem to be their most shocking aspect.

More often, the idea of balancing the various qualities of food is evoked. As they eat, the “hermaphrodites” drink wine, to which snow and ice have been added:

Beyond the gentleman servant who brought the glasses and tasted the wine, there were two more who brought the plates that I had seen on the credenza, which contained that snow and that ice, which the Hermaphrodite used to cool his wine, sometimes one, sometimes the other, as it struck his fancy.[184]

This behavior was in fact relatively common in the early modern period, and even recommended in numerous dietary manuals. Wine was considered a “hot” beverage, not in terms of temperature but in terms of its quality.[185] This quality was best tempered by mixture with water. The practice of mixing wine with ice seems to be a novelty invented by the “hermaphrodites.”

The storyteller presents many dishes and preparations that would have been familiar to the French as if they are quite exotic. The inhabitants of the island eat marinated fish, and the storyteller remarks on the superfluity of marinating fish that have come from the ocean. Once again, this marination was not unusual, as many types of fish were considered fairly difficult to digest, thus requiring some marination in order to become less glutinous. The “hermaphrodites” also eat a mixed salad, which the storyteller suggests has many more things in it than there are in salads where he comes from (France): “There were also several platters of a salad that was not like those which we eat in our country, because there were so many sorts of things that those who ate them could barely distinguish what they were.”[186] Once again, variety is seen as something strange and foreign.

The storyteller remarks on the strangeness of eating with forks, setting the stage for a brief scene of the “hermaphrodites” trying to eat artichokes, asparagus, and shelled peas and beans with their forks:

They ate it with forks, for it was forbidden in this country to touch food with one’s hands, however difficult it might be to pick up, and they preferred that this little forked instrument touch their mouths rather than their fingers. This course lasted a bit longer than the first one, after which someone brought in artichokes, asparagus, and shelled peas and beans, and then it was a pleasure to see them eat these with their forks, for those who were not so dexterous as the others allowed as much to fall into the platter, on their plates, or on the way, as got into their mouths.[187]

Using a fork was considered an essential part of hygiene later in the seventeenth century and contrasted with the general practice of eating from common serving dishes with one’s hands.

This banquet has proceeded in a manner that calls to mind the dietary manuals of the day, with bread as the basis of their diet, offered in larger quantity than any other food. The less digestible aspects of the meal—meat and fish—are served before the more digestible vegetables. And all the meats and fish are prepared with spices, served with sauce, or marinated; such preparation was recommended for heavier food, to balance it with hotter or lighter condiments.[188]

The “hermaphrodites” only eat their fruit cooked into various forms (tarts, preserves, marmalades), as they think that fresh fruit is not good for the health: “After this, fruit was brought in, but this was the least natural thing that they had, for it was almost all disguised in tarts, jellies, and other inventions. For they say that it is very damaging to the health when you eat fruit as it comes from the tree.”[189] This follows the advice of dietary manuals in this period, which recommend against eating fresh fruit late in the meal.[190]

They end the meal with preserved quince or anise: “After all this they took a bit of preserved anise and others preserved quince, but it had to be with musk, otherwise it would have had no effect on their stomachs, which had no heat unless it was perfumed.”[191] These are recommended as digestive aids, to “close the stomach”: “In some places, to close the opening of the stomach and aid in the digestion, preserved anise is presented.”[192] For every course of the meal, the “hermaphrodites” seem to be following the dietary advice of the day, particularly that of Du Chesne, who presents diet as a means of achieving the bodily and moral equilibrium.

The “hermaphrodites” remain at the table after their banquet is over and engage in conversation for quite some time, reflecting Du Chesne’s advice in The Portrait of Health that conversation after dinner aids the digestion: “One should remain at the table after the meal, without moving for at least a half an hour, passing the time in agreeable discussion with the company.”[193] They play games after dinner and listen to music, both practices advised by Du Chesne, who asserts that music helps dispel melancholy:

Those who have no other business, could pass the time in order to prevent themselves from falling asleep [the sleep after dinner being most often harmful] with tarots, chess or other pleasurable games, in which the body is not pushed too hard, and in which the mind can take some recreation. Music, and other playing of musical instruments, will be likewise sometimes a restorative exercise, and suitable for those who like it, enjoy it, and have the means to do it.[194]

Thus the “hermaphrodites” seem to be partaking in a banquet that is in accordance with the régime de santé, which suggest more self-control and self-care than might be expected, given the storyteller’s presentation of their behavior as strange.

The meal itself is framed by the hygienic practice of handwashing. All members of the court wash their hands before being seated.[195] After all of the courses and after-dinner delicacies have been served, they wash their hands again in scented water.[196] The storyteller notes this behavior mockingly, as he has with all of the practices of the “hermaphrodites,” underscoring that because of their use of forks their hands were not at all dirty.

All of this contrasts with the servants’ meal, which is smelly, noisy, disorderly, and quite unhygienic (very few of the diners wash their hands, and they all grab food from the platters with their hands), suggesting that the obsession with hygiene is limited to the elite of society. While the storyteller has mocked the effete dining habits of the noble “hermaphrodites,” his shock at the chaos of this second meal reveals him to be much more comfortable with courtly practices than with those of the servants. It should, however, be noted that the servants are eating the nobles’ leftovers, and that they are pushing each other and grabbing the food in order to get enough to eat.[197]

Political Treatises

The final section of the novel, consisting of three documents, a poem and two brief treatises, offers a discussion of the complex relationship between power and violence that had been briefly suggested in some of the laws of the “hermaphrodites.” The poem that introduces the treatises, “Contre les Hermaphrodites” [Against the Hermaphrodites] calls for a suppression of vice, an embrace of moderation, and a rejection of the world in favor of heaven. These verses are written in twelve-syllable verses known as alexandrins,[198] generally used for epic and tragic verse, and thus conveying a certain amount of gravitas to the poem. The rhymes are abab, known as rimes croisées in French. These rhymes alternate between masculine and feminine, a formal ideal of the period, but also an excellent evocation of the confusion between masculine and feminine roles in the novel. The rhymes are sufficient (suffisante, with two rhyming sounds) or rich (riches, with three or more rhyming sounds), thus putting this poem in a fairly formal register. The formal qualities of this poem do not make it great poetry. The excessive nature of the verse is underscored by awkward repetitions (fonde and fonds in verses three and four of the first stanza; creature and createur in verses three and four of the fifteenth stanza). The second stanza consists entirely of a list of nouns used to characterize vice that creates a thudding rhythm in each line. The imagery is not very vivid or engaging; it generally remains fairly abstract or at best clichéd (for example, in verses fifteen and sixteen: “la raison . . . vogue sans pilote au vent de tout object” [reason. . .sails without a pilot at the mercy of random winds]).[199] These verses attack the “atheists” who seek pleasure and contentment in the world, using violent imagery to denounce them, but one is left wondering about the effectiveness of this denunciation.

In the first treatise, “Du Souverain Bien de l’Homme” [On the Sovereign Good of Man], repetition of the word sovereign and the phrase “sovereign good” (le souverain bien) suggests that it is a parody or an imitation of Jean Bodin’s Les six livres de la République [Six Books of the Commonwealth], particularly of the first book. Bodin’s treatise begins with a discussion of the sovereign good and repeats this phrase frequently in this exordium.[200] The sentiments in Bodin’s text are generally similar to those in the parody: the republic, actually meaning a hereditary monarchy, with the king having relatively absolute power curbed only by natural and divine law, is based on the support of virtuous men who face suffering and labor courageously and disdain pleasure.[201] The treatise in The Island of Hermaphrodites begins by quoting a speech by a fictional “Atheist” who is focused on the present, the earth, and pleasure and rejects the afterlife, heaven, and self-control as monstrous.[202] The author of the treatise will continue to argue against this invented character, who is a caricature of the early seventeenth-century libertines, stating that the sovereign good cannot reside in something mortal but can only be the result of self-denial in the present in order to achieve the beatitude of an eternal sovereign good after death.

A lengthy pseudo-scholastic argument revises Aristotle’s discussion of the triple nature of the soul as nutritive, sensitive, and rational, into the depiction of a soul that consists of intellect, memory, and will, thus eliminating the more intimate connections between soul and body and making the soul the sovereign of the body.[203] Similarly, the treatise presents the material world, the earth and the sun in particular, as inferior to and dependent upon an invisible and all-powerful God that enables these imperfect entities to function, preventing the world from falling into the ancient chaos from which it was formed.[204] This discussion leads to the representation of human imperfection and the need for a higher power to guide that imperfection into a more perfect, immortal, form.[205] The argument concerning the existence of God is based entirely on the observation of the imperfection of the world and of man, thus using the abjection of material existence as the foundation of belief in divine perfection.

In its concluding pages, this treatise turns towards the political, describing the worldly man (l’homme mondain), the celestial man (l’homme celeste), and the prudent or practical man (l’homme prudent). The celestial man is the one who is prepared to endure any sacrifice for the sake of a greater good: “To acquire eternity, there is nothing that should not be suffered.”[206] Allusions to the Kingdom of Heaven veer into more earthly versions of power in the description of this perfect man “sovereignly loving his sovereign.”[207] For this sovereign, whether God or the king, the celestial man should be willing to endure even death: “He unites himself so perfectly in him (the sovereign) that even death is very desirable to him, as long as it is agreeable to his sovereign.”[208] In this theological/political system, pain becomes pleasure: “Afflictions are very pleasing to him, and he holds as a true saying that a tranquil life without any waves is a dead sea.”[209] Pain becomes pleasure, death becomes life in this scheme of things.

The closing paragraph makes the political agenda of this treatise quite clear. The king holds his power from God; therefore, even the prudent man, not as admirable as the self-sacrificing celestial man, but nonetheless worthy of some consideration, understands the obedience he owes to his sovereign and “that everything he has comes from the generosity of his sovereign.”[210] God is the sovereign monarch who assures the power of the earthly king and the systems of policing and justice that this king establishes. Freedom from the law is a vast prison of self-indulgence; sacrifice of the individual to the king and his systems of power is true freedom.

The second treatise offers a more humane view of the world, questioning the previous treatise’s emphasis on the elevation of the soul above the body and the necessary mortification of the body to achieve immortality: “But who could continually separate himself from the body, other than in death?”[211] The treatise proposes a more ethical view of the relationship between the soul and the body:

By this I mean that she must not be so spiritual that she does not think she has a body that must be maintained in order to be used freely, and that she must also not be so corporeal that she does not remember her essence and that she is the second cause of the beatitude of herself and her body.[212]

The image offered is one of care for the body by the soul, and the elevation of both soul and body together. This interdependence and ethics of care also have political significance, as the treatise brings them into a discussion of the current state of the nation and its citizens:

I know that I was born among men, in a certain country, and in a state, that is to say under certain laws. Why do you find it bad if, when I see these suffering men, the country ruined, and the laws overturned, I speak of it, I complain, and I meditate on the means to rebuild? Do I not know that I am bound together with them? That in losing this I lose myself, that this upheaval would overwhelm me under their ruin?[213]

In using the term affligez (afflicted) to designate the suffering people of this kingdom, the author of this treatise links this argument to that of the previous one justifying the misery of the people for the good of the king. This second treatise imagines a state where everyone is joined together; pain that affects some affects all. It does not deny the existence of the soul or of God but rejects the notion that these things justify the suffering of many for the sake of the sovereign. The conjunction of the body and soul in a relationship of care serves as a model for a more humane political situation, one not based on the justification of the violence deployed by the state upon its own people, violence that came very close to destroying the state during the Wars of Religion.

While the first treatise is longer and written in a convoluted scholastic style, with arguments that sometimes defy logic and comprehension, this second one is short and written in a much more engaging and accessible style. In its pleading for consideration of the body and its needs and limits, its recognition of the ways in which people are joined to each other and the body is joined to the soul, it evokes Montaigne’s essays, in particular his essay “De l’Expérience” [Of Experience]. It is interesting, then, that a philosopher so crucial to the early seventeenth-century libertine movement is imitated in the refutation of an anti-libertine text that presents the “atheist” (libertine) as a selfish and shallow individual. This treatise is thus offering a glimpse of the ethical value of libertine thought as an alternative to discussions of sovereignty as the ultimate goal and ultimate good of humankind.

The storyteller’s audience begins to discuss this second treatise, but he takes up his narration again, summarizing after-dinner discussions in the land of the “hermaphrodites.” The narration ends with some of the island’s inhabitants retiring to their chambers and others going on an expedition, while the storyteller goes into a beautiful garden to read the texts he has just read to his audience. He noticed that his audience does not seem to tire of listening to his story, and so he promises to begin again the next day, in what promises to be an unending process, suggesting the seductive and generative nature of this narrative.

Reception

A strange work by one Jonathas Petit de Brétigny published one year after the appearance of The Island of Hermaphrodites seems to offer a plan for correcting the disorder represented in the novel.[214] Interestingly, the “cure” for this social disorder, which the author sees as prevalent in France, is dietary: a regimen of philosophical books and discussions that will counter selfishness and cruelty with better thoughts and behavior. This treatise offers many precise solutions to problems that France faces; many of these problems are also noted in the laws listed in The Island of Hermaphrodites. While the title of this work would suggest that it is a critique of this novel, both works denounce violence, the ambition of the nobility, and the mistreatment of the poor, along with many other vices and abuses of the time.

The Island of Hermaphrodites was republished several times in the eighteenth century, in 1724 and 1744.[215] Each time, it was published in the context of Pierre de L’Estoile’s journals of the reign of Henri III, thereby placing it as a critique of the late Valois court. The reprintings of this work suggest a reasonably wide dissemination.[216] While there is no nineteenth-century edition of this novel, citations of it in Henry Havard’s Dictionnaire de l’ameublement for the entry on the nef de table suggest that at the very least it was being read as a source of information on the material culture of the early modern court.[217]

The only modern publication of this work to date is Claude-Gilbert Dubois’s 1996 scholarly edition. This edition inspired a resurgence of scholarship on the novel; given the complexity of this work, one can hope that such scholarship will continue to be produced.

Establishing the Text

This translation was based largely on the Folger’s copy of the first edition (probably 1605) of L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, with occasional verification of the text by consultation of the very similar copy at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, available in digital form through their Gallica site.[218] Claude-Gilbert Dubois’s modern French edition (1996) of the novel was very useful for deciphering some garbled passages (because of printing issues, damage to the pages, or opaque language), but in some cases my transcription of words differed from that edition because I was consulting a different copy of the original edition. I occasionally consulted the text and notes in the 1724 edition and in the 1744 edition, discussed above. In this introduction, I cite from Dubois’s edition, as it is more accessible than the earlier ones.

Approaches to Translation

There were a number of issues to be faced in the translation of this work. One is that the novel, as a Menippean satire, offers parodies of various textual styles: legal, philosophical, medical, dietetic, artisanal (including terms for lace, cloth, various tableware and furnishings). Some of these discourses are relatively impenetrable, and my goal was to evoke the deliberate difficulty of the language while translating the text in a more readable form.

I have also kept some of the awkward wording when it seems to me that the storyteller is being presented as pretentious (or trying to be pretentious) and when that pretention is crucial to understanding what goes on in the novel. I have tried to smooth the wording out enough to make the novel readable (and perhaps even enjoyable). Where the text is a parody of a known author (for example, in the political treatise on sovereignty at the end of the novel, which is a parody of Bodin’s discussion of sovereignty in the Les six livres de la République), I have kept the style of the parody as intact as possible (which means excessive repetition of the word sovereign and related words) because the contrast between that style and the style of the treatise that follows (which evokes Montaigne’s Essays) strikes me as being important for understanding the novel.

One other issue was the relative circularity of sources to explain certain references. The most glaring example is in the section of the novel that describes a banquet and its luxurious tableware. One of the main sources for the vocabulary used to designate tableware is Henry Havard’s Dictionnaire de l’ameublement, which in turn cites The Island of Hermaphrodites as its source for many names of items of tableware. This issue, particularly significant in nineteenth-century works on early modern material culture, made clear how important the novel was as a source for understanding the more material aspects of daily life at the French court.

The French language functions entirely within a system of binary gender; every object is either masculine or feminine. The author of this work plays with this limited system by suggesting that the language of the “hermaphrodites” offers more than two genders and by shifting between masculine and feminine nouns and pronouns when discussing them. This gives the impression that the “hermaphrodites” are genderqueer, and in fact the text states that they change on a daily basis (this is in relation to their clothing, but since the clothing establishes their chosen identity, they also change their gender when they wish to). Given the association between intersex and transgender in the early modern period, it should not surprise us that these characters have attributes of both identities. At some moments in the text, they are “Seigneursdames” (Lordladies, signaling gender duality and ambiguity), at other times they seem more stereotypically masculine or more feminine.

I have thus tried to translate gender as literally as possible, to convey the confusion created by the storyteller’s own choices of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives as he tries to understand the nature of the people he observes. I may have occasionally smoothed things over where a literal translation would create too much confusion, but since gender confusion is emphasized and is a crucial element of the social critiques being presented throughout the text, I have tried to retain the confusion as much as possible. Some of this confusion reflects the storyteller’s ignorance, and sometimes he dehumanizes the people he sees, because he does not understand them. I hope that my attempt to capture his initial ignorance does not offend my readers.

Even objects have genders in French; while I retained those genders for objects that seemed to be functioning in human manner or when gender seemed significant to the narrative, most often I translated these objects in a gender-neutral manner.

Finally, there is a complex alternation between the voice of a frame narrator and that of the storyteller who narrates the majority of the text. This is particularly confusing in the hand-off of the abridged book of laws between the two. The frame narrator has received this book in the past from the storyteller, who translated the laws into French. The former presents the book to the readers and comments after the laws have been enumerated. This section takes up over a third of the novel. Over several pages leading up to the description of the banquet that follows the section on the laws, the text alternates rapidly between the two narrators, with an exchange between the storyteller and yet another interlocutor sandwiched in. This is why I have designated the two different roles as “Frame Narrator” and “Storyteller” within the text of my translation. Along with gender confusion and the confusion of literary genres, there is often a confusion of voices, with both the frame narrator and the storyteller citing individuals speaking within the narrative. These individuals often interrupt each other, so that the distinction between speakers is even further confused, blurring the boundaries between self and other, subject and object, speaker and listener.

 

 


  1. L’Isle des Hermaphrodites; it should be noted that there is no title given in the original 1605 edition of this novel; most critics follow the example of Claude-Gilbert Dubois, who adopts the opening words of the text as the title in his edition (1996). The full text of these opening words is: “L’Isle des hermaphrodites nouvellement descouverte avec les moeurs, loix, coustume, et ordonnances des habitans d’icelle” [The Island of hermaphrodites newly discovered, with the morals, laws, customs, and edicts of the inhabitants of this land]. The first printed page of the 1605 edition is the frontispiece, with a “portrait” of a “hermaphrodite” and the title Les Hermaphrodites à Tous Accords [Hermaphrodites, may all agree].
  2. According to Micheline Baulant, the price of butter in Paris in the period 1594–1598 was 4.7 sous; this would make the price of the book the equivalent of more than twenty-six pounds of butter. See Baulant, “Prix et salaires à Paris au XVIe siècle,” 965. Unfortunately, prices ranged widely from city to city and region to region, and data on prices were not consistently kept, so any clear equivalence in monetary value between the sixteenth century and the present day is virtually impossible. For an excellent account of the monetary chaos and the monetary reforms of the late sixteenth century, see Parsons, Making Money in Sixteenth-Century France. According to Parsons, the value of the écu increased dramatically over the course of the late sixteenth century, going from 40 sols (or sous) to 65 sols between 1533 and 1609. Henri III’s official reform of the monetary system in 1577 established the value of the écu at 65 sols (Parsons, “The Inflationary Crisis and the Reforms of 1577,” 104–52; for the value of the écu in sols, 132). Parsons’s subsequent chapter, “Money and Sovereignty” (153–92), about Henri IV’s monetary reforms, makes the connection between monetary chaos and political and social upheaval quite clear, a connection that is underscored frequently in The Island of Hermaphrodites.
  3. L’Estoile, Mémoires-Journaux, 8:180: “Le livre des Hermaphrodites fust imprimé et publié en mesme temps, et se voioit à Paris en ce mesme mois, où on en fist passer l’envie du commencement aux curieux, auxquels on le vendit jusques à deux escus, ne devant valoir plus de dix sols; et en sçait un qui en paya autant à un libraire du Palais. Ce petit libelle (qui estoit assez bien fait), sous le nom de ceste Isle imaginaire, descouvroit les moeurs et façons de faire impies et vicieuses de la Cour, faisant voir clairement que la France est maintenant le repaire et l’azille de tout vice, volupté et impudence; au lieu que jadis elle estoit une académie honorable et séminaire de vertu. Le Roy le voulut voir et se le fist lire, et, encores qu’il le trouvast un peu libre et trop hardi, il se contenta néantmoins d’en apprendre le nom de l’auteur, qui estoit Arthus Thomas, lequel il ne voulust qu’on recherchast, faisant conscience, disoit-il, de fascher un homme pour avoir dit la vérité” [The book of the Hermaphrodites was printed and published at the same time, and was seen in Paris in the same month, when curious people caught the urge to start reading it and bought it for as much as two écus, when it shouldn’t have been worth any more than ten sous; and one person is known to have paid as much as that to a bookseller at the Palais. This little booklet (which was fairly well made), under the name of this imaginary Island, uncovered the impious and vicious morals and actions of the Court, making clear that France is now the refuge and asylum for every vice, pleasure, and impudence; instead of being, as it once was, an honorable academy and seminary of virtue. The king wanted to see it, and had it read to him, and although he found it a little too free and bold, he was content with learning the name of the author, which was Artus Thomas, whom he did not want to have apprehended, considering it unfair, he said, to trouble a man for having spoken the truth].
  4. Historians now generally accept that the Wars of Religion continued after the Edict of Nantes, ending only when the Protestants no longer had military or political rights and had given up any cities or territories they controlled. See Holt, The French Wars of Religion, “Introduction,” 3–4, and “Epilogue: The Last War of Religion, 1610–1629,” 178–94. See also Le Roux, Les Guerres de Religion: 1559–1629. Holt sees the Wars of Religion as beginning with the massacre of Protestants at Vassy; Le Roux proposes the death of Henri II in 1559 as the starting point. While the first official war did start with the massacre at Vassy, it is true that other conflictual events—such as the conspiracy of Protestants to kidnap the young king, François II, in 1560 at Amboise and its brutal aftermath—already signal violent religious tensions. Both Holt and Le Roux see the end of the Wars as coinciding with the destruction of La Rochelle in 1629, which left no official Protestant stronghold in France. Knecht, The French Religious Wars, places the end of the Wars of Religion at the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes.
  5. 1562–1563, ended by the Edict of Amboise; 1567–1568, ending with the Peace of Longjumeau; 1568–1570, ended by the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye; 1572–1573, ended by the Edict of Boulogne; 1574–1576, ended by the Edict of Beaulieu; 1577, ended by the Treaty of Bergerac; 1579–1580, ended by the Treaty of Fleix; 1585–1598, ended by the Edict of Nantes. These dates are taken from the chronology at the end of Miquel’s Les Guerres de Religion, 524–29.
  6. Knecht, The French Religious Wars, 91. Holt traces the economic consequences of the wars briefly in The French Wars of Religion, “Conclusion: Economic Impact, Social Change, and Absolutism,” 195–222, in particular 203–4, where he examines the impact of extensive mortality among the peasants on agricultural production.
  7. Frisch analyzes this policy in detail in her Forgetting Differences, “Learning to Forget,” 1–25.
  8. Edits des Guerres de Religion, 35–36: “Avons ordonné et ordonnons, entendons, voulons et nous plaît, que toutes injures et offenses que l’iniquité du temps, et les occasions qui en sont survenues, ont pu faire naître entre nosdits sujets, et toutes autres choses passées et causées de ces présents tumultes, demeureront éteintes, comme mortes, ensevelies et non advenues.” Translation is my own.
  9. Laonikos Chalkokondylēs, Histoire de la décadence de l’Empire grec, translated into French by Blaise de Vigenère and Artus Thomas.
  10. Philostrates of Lemnos, Les Images ou Tableaux de platte peinture des deux Philostrates.
  11. See Zinguer, Misères et grandeur de la femme au XVIe siècle. This treatise on the education of women is attributed to T. Artus, Sieur d’Embry, and is published with the title Qu’il est bien séant que les filles soyent sçavantes.
  12. Discours contre la médisance.
  13. For some background on this novel, see Dubois’s introduction to his edition (L’Isle des hermaphrodites), 7–41.
  14. Jones and Stallybrass focus on clothing in the novel in their “Fetishizing Gender,” 80–111.
  15. Dubois, L’Isle des hermaphrodites, 8–9. For the more comprehensive history of the use of the term, Dubois defers to Ronzeaud, who gives an overview in the first chapter of his study, L’Utopie hermaphrodite, 19–84.
  16. See Ovid, Metamorphoses, 4.285seq.; Dubois, L’Isle des hermaphrodites, 11–12.
  17. For the figure of the “hermaphrodite” as code for male homosexuality in the French Renaissance, see Hennig, Espadons, mignons & autres monstres, “L’île des Hermaphrodites,” 317–26. This association has been remarked upon by Poirier in L’Homosexualité dans l’imaginaire de la Renaissance, first in his chapter on medical discourse, “Discours medical, hermaphrodisme et saphisme” [Medical Discourse, Hermaphrodism and Sapphism], 61–73, and then in a subsequent chapter on the court of Henri III, “Les Années tragiques” [The Tragic Years], 147–61, with particular attention given to The Island of Hermaphrodites in 157–59. See Long, Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe, “The Royal Hermaphrodite,” 189–213.
  18. Paré, Des Monstres et prodiges, 24.
  19. For an excellent general account of wonders or monsters, see Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature.
  20. This is true of Dubois’s introduction to the modern edition, L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, 7–46, as well as of his critical work, particularly “La première anti-utopie française,” “Le sauvage et l’hermaphrodite,” and “Horrible sphinx.” Stone focuses primarily on the question of sexuality in “The Sexual Outlaw in France, 1605,” 597–608. See also Poirier, L’Homosexualité, cited above in note 17; Leibacher-Ouvrard, “Decadent Dandies and Dystopian Gender-Bending,” 124–31; as well as Long, Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe, “Hermaphrodites Newly Discovered,” 215–35. For historical background on sexuality in the courts of Henri III and Henri IV, see Crawford, “Love, Sodomy, and Scandal,” and “The Politics of Promiscuity.” For more general background on sexuality in early modern France, see Crawford, The Sexual Culture of the French Renaissance. For an important discussion of gender and power, see Rothstein, The Androgyne in Early Modern France.
  21. Fausett, “Baroque Allegories,” 52.
  22. Fausett, “Baroque Allegories,” 57–58.
  23. Reeser sees the gender ambiguity of the “hermaphrodites” as integrally related to excess and consequently to the disruption of social order in Moderating Masculinity in Early Modern Culture, “Ruling the Hermaphrodites,” 235–65. Rebecca Zorach offers a detailed analysis of the aesthetics and politics of excess in relation to gender in the court of Henri III in Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold, 220–235.
  24. Jones and Stallybrass, “Fetishizing Gender.”
  25. Ferguson, Queer (Re)Readings, “Androgynes, Hermaphrodites, and Courtesans,” 265.
  26. Patera, “‘Un homme à demy,’” 430–41. Patera bases his argument in part on Mathieu-Castellani’s analysis of the novel as utopian travel fiction in “L’autre monde ou l’utopie sexuelle,” 299–308.
  27. This duality is expressed in the title of a utopian/dystopian work contemporary to The Island of Hermaphrodites, Joseph Hall’s Mundus alter et idem. This work was translated into English and published in 1609 as The Discovery of a New World or a Description of the South Indies hitherto unknowne. The most recent modern edition is published with the title Another World and Yet the Same: Bishop Joseph Hall’s Mundus alter et idem. Fausett discusses both works (Another World and Yet the Same and L’Isle de Hermaphrodites) in “Baroque Allegories,” 44–60. Hall’s work briefly mentions an “Ile Hermaphrodite,” offering a tempting echo between the works, but as Fausett makes clear, these two novels are quite different.
  28. For a discussion of this long process of peacemaking, see Greengrass, Governing Passions.
  29. Most notably in Bodin’s Les six livres de la République, first published in Paris by Jacques du Puys in 1577; the most recent edition is by Mario Turchetti and Nicolas de Araujo.
  30. Lucian of Samosata, Les Oeuvres, translated by Filbert Bretin and published in 1583.
  31. Rapin et al., Satyre Ménippée, 1594.
  32. Weinbrot, Menippean Satire Reconsidered, 5–6: “We see copiousness, various mixtures of genres, languages, plots, periods, and places whether super- or subterrestrial. We also see finite and recurring topics: concern with dangerous, harmful, spreading views whether personal or public, whether by the individual human being who needs to learn not to fantasize about harmful heroism or beauty, the governor who needs to learn not to tyrannize, or the nation that needs to learn not to destroy its benevolent heritage. I call these responses to a dangerous or threatening false orthodoxy.” For an analysis of the 1594 Satyre Ménippée, see Hayes, “Rabelaisian Satire and the Conciliation of the Satyre Ménippée,” 104–14.
  33. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 66–67; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 58: “tandis nous nous mismes à contempler un edifice assez proche de nous, la beauté duquel ravit tellement nos esprits, que nous avions plustost opinion que ce fust une illusion qu’une chose veritable. Le marbre, le Jaspe, le Porphire, l’or, et la diversité des émaux estoit ce qu’il y avoit de moindre; car l’architecture, la sculpture, et l’ordre que l’on y voyoit compassé en toutes ses parties, attiroit tellement l’esprit en admiration, que l’oeil, qui peut voir tant de choses en un instant, n’estoit pas assez suffisant pour comprendre tout le contenu de ce beau palais. [. . .] nous. . .trouvasmes de premier abord un long Perystile ou rang de colonnes Caryatides, lesquelles avoient pour chapiteau la teste d’une femme; de là nous entrasmes dans une grande court de laquelle le pavement estoit si luisant et si glissant qu’à peine s’y pouvoit on tenir. Toutesfois l’envie de passer plus outre nous feit aller tous chancelans au grand escalier, au devant duquel estoit un perron entouré de douze colomnes, accompagné d’un portail si superbement enrichy qu’il estoit impossible de le considerer sans s’esblouyr: au dessus de l’architrave duquel se voyoit une statue d’albastre, sortant le corps à demy hors d’une mer, qui estoit assez bien representée par diverses sortes de marbres et de porphires. Ceste statuë estoit autant bien proportionnee qu’il se pouvoit, laquelle tenoit en l’une de ses mains un rouleau où estoit escrit ce mot Planiandrion.” According to Dubois, the term Planiandrion means “a woman’s diadem on the head of a man.” Palumu, in “Relire L’Isle des Hermaphrodites,” suggests the translation “place of deceit” based on the Greek roots of the word.
  34. His emigration from Antwerp may well have been for reasons of religious persecution. See Heuer, The City Rehearsed, 141–45.
  35. For a more detailed analysis of the intersections between the architectural work of Vredeman de Vries and the setting in The Island of Hermaphrodites, see Long, “Cities of the Dead,” 547–71. For a catalog of his works, see Hollstein, Hollstein’s Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, vols. XLVII and XLVIII: Vredeman de Vries. Three collections of this work seem most significant for the description of the palace in this novel: Vredeman de Vries’s Caryatidum. . .multiformium, his Scenographiae, and his Variae Architecturae formae.
  36. Heuer, The City Rehearsed, 12.
  37. Uppenkamp, “The Influence of Hans Vredeman de Vries on the Cityscape Constructed like a Picture,” 117: “When Hans Vredeman de Vries designed his first perspective views of ideal cityscapes in 1560, he called the series ‘Scenographiae, sive Perspectivae. . .’ pointing out that it showed twenty beautiful views of buildings for the exercise of optics. The term scenographia can be traced back to Vitruvius, signifying the perspective view of architecture. It refers to the world of theatre, where scaena is the word for the stage decoration. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the decoration of the stage was discussed as a part of the study of perspective. In his second book on architecture dealing with geometry, Sebastiano Serlio explains perspective by showing the prospects of three stage designs. These three prospects were meant to correspond with the three genres of stage plays: the tragedy, the comedy, and the satire. The design for the satire shows trees, caves, mountains, and other rural motifs. The stage design for comedies is characterized by private dwellings with oriels, balconies and windows that imitate ordinary architecture. The characteristics of the tragic scene are triumphal arches, obelisks, temples and palaces, the use of classic forms throughout and a completely symmetrical layout.”
  38. Vredeman de Vries, Theatrum Vitae Humanae.
  39. Heuer, The City Rehearsed, 127. Heuer adds: “Fragments of sculpture and column entablatures lie strewn across a desiccated, burning hillside as flames leap from a crumbling building and storms lash a jagged cliff. The horror of the scene implies ethical consequences on a biblical scale for the rejection of proper décor; naturalized as extensions of human existence, the columns are bodies which time will ravage and disassemble.”
  40. For this, see Long, “Rereading Space in The Island of Hermaphrodites,” 187–208.
  41. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 76–77; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 70–71: “au milieu du lict on voyoit une statue d’un homme à demy hors du lict, qui avoit un bonnet à peu pres fait de la forme de ceux des petits enfans nouveaux vestus. . .Le visage estoit si blanc, si luysant, et d’un rouge si esclatant, qu’on voyoit bien qu’il y avoit plus d’artifice que de nature; ce qui me faisoit aisément croire que ce n’estoit que peinture.”
  42. Heuer, The City Rehearsed, 101.
  43. Heuer, The City Rehearsed, 134.
  44. For the concern about blurring of social hierarchies expressed in sumptuary laws, see Bastien, “Aux tresors dissipez l’on cognoist le malfaict,” 23–43. While four edicts promulgated by Charles IX (1561, 1563, 1568, and 1573) focused on the disruption of the social order caused by the merchant and working classes wearing clothes designated for the nobility, the reign of Henri III saw the greatest number of edicts and other texts decrying widespread adoption of the most expensive materials in clothing. Henri’s court, however, did not provide an example of modest sartorial practices, as the costs of clothing and jewelry at court were considerable, and the contradiction between courtly practices and control of clothing over the rest of society did not go unnoticed. Henri IV’s 1601 edict, in contrast, focuses on the financial ruin caused by excessive expenditures on clothing (Bastien, 27–35).
  45. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 71–75; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 63–73.
  46. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 68; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 59–60: “Je vy donc qu’ils s’en alloient droict à un lict assez large et spatieux, lequel avec l’espace qu’il laissoit entre luy et la muraille tenoit une bonne partie de la chambre. . . Luy donc encore endormy se met en son seant, et aussi tost on luy mit sur ses espaules un petit manteau de satin blanc chamarré de clinquant, et doublé d’une estoffe ressemblant à la pane de soye. Je n’avois encore veu ce que c’estoit qui estoit dans ce lict, car on ne voyoit point encore les mains ny le visage; mais celuy qui luy avoit mis le manteau vint aussi tost luy lever un linge qui luy pendoit fort bas sur le visage, et à luy oster un masque qui n’estoit pas des estoffes ny de la forme de celuy que portent ordinairement les Dames, car il estoit comme d’une toille luisante et fort serrée. . .”
  47. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 68; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 59.
  48. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 68; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 60.
  49. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 77; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 71.
  50. Levey, Lace: A History, 6.
  51. For basic background on Vinciolo, see Montupet and Schoeller, Lace: The Elegant Web, 32, 37. See also Levey, Lace, 7. Vinciolo’s pattern-book was published under the title Les singuliers et nouveaux pourtraicts, du Seigneur Federic de Vinciolo Venitien, pour toutes sortes d’ouvrages de Lingerie in 1587. The Newberry Library copy of this book, dedicated to Henri III and his queen, Louise de Vaudémont, adds that this particular edition of the book has been augmented for the third time (pour la troisiesme fois augmentez follows the title on the title page), which suggests that three editions were published in 1587 alone.
  52. Earnshaw, A Dictionary of Lace, 40: “Cutwork. (a) An important form of embroidered lace which in its simplest form consisted of holes cut in linen, embroidered around with thread, and decorated with buttonhole-stitch bars.” Earnshaw notes that cutwork was “expensive” and its use limited to nobility of higher ranks.
  53. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 72; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 65: “Ceste chemise baillee de laquelle on rehaussa aussi tost le collet, de sorte que vous eussiez dit que la teste estoit en embuscade, on luy apporta un pourpoint; dans lequel il y avoit comme une forme de cuirassine pour rendre les espaules esgales, car il en avoit une plus haute que l’autre, et aussi tost celuy qui luy avoit baillé son pourpoint luy vint reverser ce grand collier de point couppé que je disois cy dessus et que j’eusse presque creu estre de quelque parchemin fort blanc, tant il faisoit du bruit quand on le manioit; il falloit le renverser d’une mesure si certaine, qu’avant qu’il fust à son poinct on haussoit et baissoit ce pauvre Hermaphrodite, que vous eussiez dit qu’on luy donnoit la gesne; quand cela estoit mis en la forme qu’ils desiroient, cela s’appelloit le don de la rotonde.”
  54. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 72; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 65: “Ce pourpoint estoit un peu eschancré par devant, et la chemise de mesme, afin de monstrer un peu la blancheur et polissure de la gorge; mais outre ceste eschancrure on ne laissoit pas de voir encore quelques d’icelles (dentelles in the 1605 Folger copy) de point couppé, au travers desquelles la chair paroissoit, afin que ceste diversité rendist encore la chose plus desirable.”
  55. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 73; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 66: “Apres qu’il fust attaché, on luy vint renverser de grandes manchettes d’ouvrage qui couvroient environ la quatriesme partie du bras, tandis qu’un autre accommodoit fort curieusement la dentelle du collet, car il falloit qu’elle fust un peu relevée afin de mieux faire la roue. Aussi avois-je oublié à vous dire qu’au collet du pourpoint il y en avoit encore un autre attaché d’une autre couleur que n’estoit le pourpoint, fort piqué et cottonné, qui se playoit et renversoit, de sorte qu’alors que le collet de la chemise esoit dessus, il estoit fort esloigné du corps du pourpoint.”
  56. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 72; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 65.
  57. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 81; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 77.
  58. For a more sustained discussion of normativity and disability in this novel, see Long, “Shaping Bodies, Reimagining the World,” 127–39.
  59. This odd term is a reference not to strawberries but to viscera, which apparently have a lacy appearance. See Ruppert, Le Costume, vol. 2: Renaissance ​—​ Louis XIII, 28: “La fraise (designée ainsi à cause de sa ressemblance avec le viscère: fraise de veau), fut en vogue jusqu’à la fin du régne d’Henri IV. D’abord de dimension raisonnable, elle finit par atteindre des dimensions ridiculement exagérées et se composa de plusieurs rangs de tuyaux parfois superposés” [The fraise—called thus because of its resemblance to viscera; calf’s viscera—was in fashion up until the end of the reign of Henri IV. At first reasonable in size, it finished by achieving ridiculously exaggerated dimensions and was made up of several rows of fluting, called gadroons, sometimes superimposed].
  60. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 78; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 72. This concern for the ruff is noted by Earnshaw, Lace in Fashion, 17. The elaborate care required to make a ruff wearable, with its wire frame, heavy starch, and pleating or fluting, made it a time-consuming and extravagant accessory. This airy but menacing exoskeleton (Earnshaw notes that the heavily starched points of the ruff could cut anyone who came too close) also forced others at court to keep their distance, thus serving the defensive purpose suggested by the term “ambush” in the text.
  61. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 81; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 77.
  62. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 84; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 82.
  63. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 90; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 90.
  64. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 98; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 100.
  65. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 107; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 112.
  66. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 117; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 125.
  67. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 83; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 81.
  68. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 83; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 82: “de nostre tres-certaine science, pleine puissance et authorité, avons estably, statué et ordonné, establissons, statuons et ordonnons ce qui ensuit.”
  69. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 84; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 82: “Les ceremonies de Bacchus, et de Cupido et de Venus, soient icy continuellement et religieusement observées; toute autre religion en soit bannie à perpetuité, si ce n’est pour plus grande volupté.”
  70. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 84; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 83: “Nous conseillons à tous nos subjets, quand ils se rencontreront avec ceux qui font cas de la pieté, ce qui doit estre fort rarement, de discourir avec beaucoup de zele de la devotion.”
  71. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 85; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 84.
  72. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 86; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 85.
  73. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 86–87; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 86.
  74. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 84; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 83: “Nul n’aye aucune souvenance de la mort, et ne se travaille l’esprit s’il y doit avoir une autre vie.”
  75. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 87; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 86: “Les ministres ordinaires du temple seront chantres, baladins, comediens, farceurs et autres de semblable estoffe.”
  76. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 87; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 87.
  77. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 88; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 88.
  78. It should be noted that the phrase “articles of faith” is used by Thomas Aquinas to describe the principles of Catholic faith in his treatise De articulis fidei et Ecclesiae sacramentis.
  79. This “Confession de Foi” can be found in Bèze, Histoire ecclésiastique des églises réformées, 109–21.
  80. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 89; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 90: “C’est pourquoi nous tenons pour follie toute autre communion que celle qui le [sic] trouve en nos assemblées, que nous croyons ne pouvoir estre maintenuës que par le moyen de l’ancienne opinion des gnostiques.”
  81. See Pintard, Le libertinage érudit, 60–68, for the significant influence of Montaigne on libertine thought and the distinctions between the essayist’s own ideas and later versions of libertinage [meaning free thinking in this era].
  82. Pintard, Le libertinage érudit, 12–14.
  83. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 91–92; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 91–93.
  84. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 90–91; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 91.
  85. Billacois, The Duel, 96. An excellent account of the duel itself is offered by Le Roux, “Le point d’honneur, la faveur et le sacrifice,” 579–95. See also Le Roux, La faveur du Roi, 388–416, for the background on this duel and its effects on the court and on Henri III’s reputation. Ferguson offers an excellent analysis of the literary and political repercussions of this event in Queer (Re)Readings, “Mourning/Scorning the Mignons: Representations of Heroism and Favouritism at the Court of Henri III,” 147–90.
  86. For this reaction to the duel des mignons, see Chevalier, Discours des querelles et de l’honneur, 3; and La Taille, Discours notables des duels, de leur origine en France, 82. The author of The Island of Hermaphrodites would have had access to Chevalier’s work.
  87. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 93; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 93–94: “Nous n’entendons point qu’il y ait parmy nos subjects aucuns degrez de consanguinité, si ce n’est en ce qui regardera les biens et possessions, et pour ceste consideration seule nous avons voulu retenir les noms de frere, soeurs, oncle, nepveu, cousin germain, et autres. Ne croyans pas que pour le regard du sang on se puisse dire d’une famille plustost que d’une autre, à cause de la multitude des peres que chacun peut avoir, et des suppositions qui se peuvent faire. C’est pourquoi nous abolissons dès maintenant et pour tousjours ces noms de pere, mere, frere, soeurs, et autres, ains voulons qu’on use seulement de ceux de Monsieur, Madame, ou autres de pareil honneur, selon la coustume des pays.”
  88. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 93; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 93.
  89. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 93; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 94.
  90. For the divergence of punishment between men and women and for the importance of this gendered hierarchy within marriage for the state, see Hanley, “Engendering the State,” 4–27 (particularly 14–27). See also Bodin, Les six livres de la République, bk. 1, ch. 2, “Du mesnage, et la différence entre la République et la famille” [On the Household, and the Difference between the Republic and the Family], 180–99, for his discussion of the family as the basis for the state. This discussion continues through subsequent chapters (ch. 3, “De la puissance maritale, et s’il est expedient de renouveller la loy de repudiation” [On Marital Power, and Whether it is Expedient to Renew the Law of Repudiation], 200–225; ch. 4, “De la puissance paternelle, et s’il est bon d’en user comme les anciens romains” [On Paternal Power, and Whether it is Good to Use it in the Manner of the Ancient Romans], 226–65), establishing his opinion that the patriarchal family unit is crucial for political stability.
  91. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 93; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 94–95.
  92. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 94; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 95–96.
  93. See Carey, Judicial Reform in France, 7, for the explanation of “épices,” or spices: “épices, or gifts, fees, and other emoluments from litigants to supplement their gages, or official interest income.” Carey discusses the role of excessive bribery, or “épices,” in the corruption of the judiciary.
  94. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 95–96; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 97–99.
  95. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 97; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 99–100.
  96. For this ambition and for Henri de Guise’s communications with Philip II of Spain, see Carroll, Martyrs and Murderers, “Revolution,” 256–80.
  97. One example of this is Henri’s attempt to appoint officials to oversee the capacity of containers in which alcoholic beverages are stored and sold: Henri IV, Declaration du roy du XXIV juin 1598, pour l’establissement des offices de iaugeurs, mesureurs de vaisseaux, barriques, tonneaux, & fustailles à mettre vins, cidres, bieres, huiles, verjus, vinaigres, & autres breuvages & liqueurs: en toutes les villes, bourgs & paroisses de ce royaume. Verifiée en la cour des aydes, le vingstseptième octobre 1598 [Declaration of the king on the 24 of June 1598, for the establishment of the posts of gauger, measurers of vessels, casks, barrels, and hogsheads for holding wines, ciders, beers, oils, verjuices, vinegars, and other drinks and liquors. In all cities, towns, and parishes of this kingdom. Verified in the Court of Aids the twenty-seventh of October, 1598].
  98. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 98; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 100.
  99. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 99; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 101.
  100. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 99; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 102: “Les années que le bled et le vin sera plus rare que de coustume, aux pays principalement où il n’est pas en trop grande quantité, nous permettons aux nostres d’en faire magazins, et ne le debiter qu’à l’extremité, à fin de tirer plus aisément tout le mauvais sang du public qui leur vient durant les années de l’abondance, et par une subtile alchimie le convertir en leur substance.”
  101. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 99–100; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 102.
  102. See Devèze, La vie de la forêt française, 2:176–78.
  103. Charles IX of France, Ordonnance du Roy, sur la police et reiglement des bois, tant des forests, qu’autres: soit pour edifices, cercles, eschallatz, chauffages, & autres quelzconques [Ordinance of the King, on the Control and Management of Woods, Forests, as well as others, Whether for Buildings, Barrel Hoops, Vineyard Stakes, Heating, and Other Purposes].
  104. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 100: “without the reformers being able to assert their distinctions between wood that is dead and wood of no value”; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, 102: “sans que les reformateurs puissent apporter leur distinctions de bois mort et mort bois.”
  105. Devèze, La vie de la forêt française, “Les droit d’usage au bois,” 1:83–85.
  106. These trees were known as chablis. See Devèze, La vie de la forêt française, 2:349.
  107. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 100; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 102: “Mais voulons que tous chablis, soit qu’on leur ait mis le feu au pied, ou autrement, soient bois d’usage, notre intention estant telle, que pour leur regard toutes forests soient de la nature du bois de Danaé, à sçavoir que les gruyers n’y puissent jamais donner coup de marteau.”
  108. For the interdiction against logging trees with the king’s mark hammered into them, see Edicts et ordonnances de eaues et forests, 158–59. There is a 1588 edition of this collection (Paris: Houzé), which the author of L’Isle des Hermaphrodites may well have known. Dubois (L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, 102) confuses the merchants’ marks, which signal permission to log, with those made by the foresters themselve (gruyers), which signal a prohibition of logging certain trees. For the merchants’ marks, see Edicts et ordonnances, 82–83. For more on the royal practice of martelage, or marking protected trees with a hammer imprint, see Garrouste and Pucheu, “L’usage des marteaux forestiers,” 63–78.
  109. Devèze, La vie de la forêt française, 2:211–12.
  110. Devèze, La vie de la forêt française, 2:350.
  111. The expression here is “au pied de la lettre.”
  112. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 100; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 103: “Et quand on leur ordonnera de vendre quelque quantité de pieds d’arbre, nous voulons qu’ils ne s’arrestent pas au pied de la lettre, comme on le prend communément, mais selon leur intelligence, à sçavoir de compter autant d’arbres pour un pied, comme on compte ordinairement de poulces pour composer un pied Royal.”
  113. Devèze, La vie de la forêt française, 2:177–78.
  114. See Chauffourt, Instruction sur le faict des eaues et forests, 2. See also Devèze, La vie de la forêt française, “Les consequences des guerres de religion. A.—Les dégats dus aux guerres et le mauvais aménagement des forêts,” 2:227–53.
  115. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 101; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 103.
  116. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 101; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 104.
  117. See Pottinger, “Censorship,” 54–81, particularly 54–60, for a discussion of the laws passed to broaden the scope of censorship.
  118. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 101; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 104.
  119. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 101–2; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 104–5.
  120. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 102; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 105: “Chacun pourra s’abiller à sa fantasie, pourveu que ce soit bravement, superbement, et sans aucune distinction ny consideration de sa qualité ou faculté. Que si une estoffe mise en oeuvre, quelque precieuse quelle soit, n’est enrichie avec superfluité de broderie d’or, d’argent, de pierreries, et de perles, et le plus souvent sans bien-séance, nous tenons tels accoustrements pour vils, mesquins, et indignes d’estre portez aux bonnes compagnies, reputans toute modestie en cela pour bassesse de coeur et faute d’esprit. Aussi tenons-nous pour une reigle presque generale parmy nous, que tels accoustrements honorent plustost qu’ils ne sont honorez: car cest Isle l’habit fait le moine, et non pas le contraire.”
  121. Bastien, “Aux trésors dissipez,” 25. Boucher, in her monumental study Société et mentalités autour de Henri III, 315–50, notes the evident contradiction between these strict sumptuary laws and the breathtakingly large expenditures on clothing and jewelry by the French court itself in the period of Henri III’s reign (1574–1589).
  122. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 104; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 108: “Chacun se pourra aussi habiller à sa fantaisie, quelque bizarre que puisse estre l’invention. . .”
  123. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 102; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 105.
  124. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 102; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 106.
  125. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 103; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 106–7.
  126. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 103–4; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 107–8.
  127. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 104; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 108.
  128. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 104–5; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 109.
  129. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 105; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 109. For the history and nature of the jeux floraux, see Gélis, Histoire critique des jeux floraux depuis leur origine jusqu’à leur transformation en Académie (1323–1694).
  130. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 105; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 109.
  131. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 105; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 109. This is in stark contrast to Paré’s violent condemnation of beggars in Le vingtcinquiesme livre, traitant des Monstres et Prodiges, in Les Oeuvres, chs. 20–24, 2768–78.
  132. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 105–6; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 109–10.
  133. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 106; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 110.
  134. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 106–7; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 111.
  135. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 107; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 111.
  136. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 107 (L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 111–12.
  137. Common gender nouns in Latin can be either masculine or feminine, depending on usage. Latin also has nouns with neuter, masculine, or feminine gender only.
  138. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 77; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 71–72: “En cest ruelle allerent les trois personnes que je disoy ci-dessus, et commencerent à invoquer ceste idole par des noms qui ne se peuvent pas bien representer en nostre langue, d’autant que tout le langage, et tous les termes des Hermaphrodites, sont de mesmes ceux que les Grammairiens appellant du genre commun, et tiennent autant du masle que de la femelle; toutesfois desirant savoir quels discours ils tenoient là, un de leur suite, de qui je m’estois accosté, et qui entendoit bien l’Italien, me dict qu’ils donnoient mille loüanges à ses perfections, et entre autres qu’ils loüoient fort la beauté et la blancheur de ses mains. . .”
  139. It should be noted that this is not uniformly true in early modern France; some words did have common or at least changeable gender. See Rigolot, “Quel ‘genre’ d’amour pour Louise Labé?” 303–17.
  140. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 79–83; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 74–79.
  141. This may be a reference to servants or courtiers who carried coded messages between members of the court and could interpret these messages. See LaGuardia, “Two Queens, a Dog, and a Purloined Letter,” 19–36.
  142. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 109; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 114–15: “Par grace et privilege special nous voulons aussi qu’il soit permis à nos subjects d’inventer les termes et les mots necessaires pour la civile conversation, lesquels seront ordinairement à deux ententes: l’une représentant à la lettre ce qu’ils auront envie de dire, l’autre un sens mystique de voluptez, qui ne sera entendu que de leurs semblables, ou qui auront esté leurs legionaires, avec ceste observation, que le son en soit doux en le prononçant, de peur d’offencer la delicatesse de leurs oreilles, avec deffences d’en user d’autres, quelque substance, propriété ou signification qu’ils puissent avoir de ce qu’on voudra dire. Et à fin que la continuation ne leur puisse apporter quelque ennui, nous estimons qu’il est fort à propos de les changer tous les ans, à fin que si à la longue le vulgaire en vouloit user, ils puissent quant à eux avoir tousjours quelque chose de particulier.”
  143. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 109; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 115: “D’autant que les nostres ont entre eux plusieurs menées, conspirations, desseins, et entreprises secretes, soit pour l’amour, soit pour l’Estat, nous leur avons permis et permettons d’avoir dès maintenant et à tousjours quelque langue ou jargon composé à leur fantasie qu’ils nommeront de quelque nom estrange, comme Mesopotamique, Pantagruelique, et autres. Useront aussi de signes au lieu de paroles, à fin d’estre entendus en leurs pensées plus secretes, par leurs consçachans, et sans estre descouverts.”
  144. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 115–16; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 123.
  145. See, for example, Fourquevaux, Instructions sur le faict de la guerre, which gives fairly detailed descriptions of the organization of the French army. For a modern account of the sixteenth-century French army, see Wood, The King’s Army. Particularly helpful are the chapters on “The Camp and Army of the King,” 38–66, and “The Army in the Field,” 67–85.
  146. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 117; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 125.
  147. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 117; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 126: “nous voulons que la multitude desdits goujats, et autres, soit trois fois plus grande que toute l’armée ensemble.”
  148. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 118; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 126.
  149. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 118; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 127: “la Déesse Picorée.”
  150. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 118–19; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 127.
  151. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 119; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 128: “Que s’ils trouvent de la resistance, nous leur permettons d’user de brisemens, bruslemens, violemens, et rançonnemens, quand bien ce seroit sur nos propres subjects (sur lesquels ils doivent le mieux faire leurs affaires).”
  152. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 122; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 133: “il ne seroit pas raisonnable que nos soldats fussent assubjectis aux ordonnances de police ny de religion.”
  153. For the history of Galenic medicine, see Temkin, Galenism.
  154. Galen, De sanitate tuenda libri sex, trans. Thomas Linacre. For a modern English translation, see Hygiene, ed. and trans. Ian Johnston.
  155. Galen, De euchymia et cacochymia, trans. Johann Winter von Andernach.
  156. Galen, De alimentorum facultatibus libri tres, 1549. For a modern English translation, see On the Properties of Foodstuffs, trans. Owen Powell.
  157. Albala, Eating Right, 36. In the same year as Estienne’s De nutrimentis was published, Prosper Calano’s Traicté excellent pour l’entretenement de santé appeared, offering another adaptation of Galen’s work on diet.
  158. Marilyn Nicoud has traced the appropriation and diffusion of these materials throughout Europe in the late Middle Ages in her exhaustive study, Les régimes de santé au Moyen Âge. Nicoud notes in her eighth chapter, “Culture de cour et culture du corps” (339–95), that this genre evolved in relation to court life in particular.
  159. Albala, Eating Right, 30–36.
  160. Albala, Eating Right, 17: “the idea of health as a balance of hot and dry or cold and moist elements in the body is Hippocratic in origin, as is the focus on what later came to be called the ‘non-naturals,’ or external factors influencing health such as diet, exercise, environment, and emotions.”
  161. First published in Rome in 1470, Platina’s work, translated into English as On Right Pleasure and Good Health, was translated into French as De honneste volupté [On Honorable Pleasure]. While Platina gestures briefly towards the wider range of dietetics as bodily regimens including sleep, exercise, and other aspects of what we would call “lifestyle,” his focus is primarily on food and its preparation.
  162. García-Ballester, Galen and Galenism, “On the Origin of the ‘Six Non-natural Things’ in Galen,” 105.
  163. A French translation of Galen’s De euchymia et cacochymia appears mid-century: Le Livre de C. Galen traictant des viandes qui engendrent bon et mauvais suc [The Book of C. Galen on the Foods that Produce Good and Bad Blood].
  164. Albala, Eating Right, 39; Joubert and Bachot, Premiere et seconde partie des erreurs populaires. The second part of this work is largely written by Gaspard Bachot.
  165. La Framboisière, Le gouvernement necessaire a chacun pour vivre longuement en santé. As Albala points out in Eating Right, 42: “Nicholas Abraham, sieur de La Framboisiere [sic], composed his own dietary, Le gouvernement necessaire. It seems fitting that following the destruction of the French civil wars, attention should have been directed toward ‘good government’ of the realm and the body. This is the controlling metaphor of his work. . .”
  166. Le Pourtraict de la santé was published in 1606.
  167. Albala, Eating Right, 42.
  168. See Giacomotto-Charra, “Le Régime de santé, vecteur de diffusion des savoirs nouveaux,” 231–57. Giacomotto-Charra points out that this experiential element distinguishes Du Chesne from the more theoretical focus of the “médecin universitaire contemporain” [contemporary university doctor], 235–40.
  169. Du Chesne, Le Pourtraict, Table of Contents, a7. For more on this aspect of Du Chesne’s work, see Giacomotto-Charra, “Prévenir et guérir à l’âge de la nature corrompue,” 83–99.
  170. For a different perspective on dietetics in Gargantua, see Jeanneret, Des Mets et des Mots, “La diète,” 70–84. See Rabelais, Gargantua, Oeuvres, ch. 23, 66: “parlans pour les premiers moys de la vertus, propriété, efficace, et nature, de tout ce que leur estoit servy à table. Du pain, du vin, de l’eau, du sel, des viandes, poissons, fruictz, herbes, racines, et de l’aprest d’icelles. Ce que faisant aprint en peu de temps tous les passaiges à ce competens en Pline, Athené, Dioscorides, Jullius pollux [sic], Galen, Porphyre, Opian, Polybe, Heliodore, Aristoteles, Aelian, et aultres” [Gargantua and Pantagruel, 88: “speaking in the first place of the virtues, properties, efficacy, and nature of whatever was served to them at table: of the bread, the wine, the water, the salt, the meats, fish, fruit, herbs, and roots, and of their dressing. From this talk Gargantua learned in a very short time all the relevant passages in Pliny, Athenaeus, Dioscorides, Julius Pollux, Galen, Porphyrius, Oppian, Polybius, Heliodorus, Aristotle, Aelian, and others”].
  171. Bèze, Satyres Chrestiennes de la cuisine papale; particularly the fifth satire, “Banquet Papal,” 83–111. For an analysis of this banquet, see Szabari, “The Kitchen and the Digest,” 112–22. For an analysis of this work in the context of Calvinist polemical literature, see Hayes, Hostile Humor in Renaissance France, “Geneva’s Polemical Machine,” 83–103; for the analysis of the Satyres Chrestiennes, see 97–103.
  172. Reeser, Moderating Masculinity, 247: “With these immoderations, the king does not rule in any sense, which is best symbolized in a banquet scene late in the narrative.”
  173. For a discussion of the evocation Galenic dietetics, and of Du Chesne in particular, in this novel, see Long, “Dining with the Hermaphrodites,” 87–111.
  174. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 126; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 139: “Au bout d’en bas, il y avoit une fort longue table et assez large, dessus laquelle il y avoit un grand linge estendu traisnant jusques en terre; dessus ceste table on avoit mis un petit escalier de bois, de quatre ou cinq degrez seulement, qui contenoit toute la longueur de la table, et sur lequel escalier on avoit estendu un autre linge qui couvroit chacune de ses marches. J’estois estonné à quoi pouvoit servir cette ceremonie, mais aussi tost on vint arranger plusieurs sortes de vaisselles d’argent, comme plats, escuelles, assiettes, bassins, vases, esguïeres, et tout cela disposé en fort bel ordre, de sorte que cela avoit quelque ressemblance avec ces reposoirs qu’on faict en ce pays, le jour de la feste Dieu.”
  175. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 127; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 140: “De l’autre costé de cette table, il y avoit une grande corbeille, et dans icelle plusieurs sortes de pain: l’un faict, comme ils disoyent, de paste levee, l’autre de paste broyée, un autre avec de la levure; l’un estoit mollet, boursouflé et sale, l’autre tout plat et sans sel; l’un esoit rond, l’autre long; un autre faict à cornes, l’un plus petit, l’autre un peu plus grosset. En fin il y en avoit de tous aages, et de toutes especes.”
  176. Du Chesne, Le Pourtraict, 204: “il n’est pas une si bonne, apte, ferme et convenable nourriture, pour nos corps, qu’est le pain. . . Or il y a beaucoup de sortes et differences de pain, dont nous decrirons les principales, et celles qui sont en usage. . .” [There is no food that is so good, appropriate, firm, and suitable for our bodies as bread. . . So, there are many different sorts of bread, and we will describe the main types, and those in use. . .]. The description of bread in Du Chesne extends from 204–15.
  177. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 127; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 140: “et lors me prenant par la main, il me mena à l’autre bout de la salle où nous trouvasmes une autre table dès-ja toute preparée. La nappe estoit d’un linge fort mignonnement damassé; mais d’autant qu’en ce pays là les choses qui sont en leur naturel, quelque degré de perfection qu’elles puissent avoir acquis, ne leur sont point agreables, si elles ne sont desguisées, elle avoit esté ployée d’une certaine façon que cela ressembloit fort à quelque riviere ondoyante qu’un petit vent faict doucement souslever. Car parmy plusieurs petits plis, on y voyoit force boüillons.” Bouillons can mean ornamental knots in household drapes or tablecloths, bubbles in an ocean or river, or broths.
  178. Havard, Dictionnaire de l’ameublement, 3.1082–95.
  179. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 129; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 141. See Havard, Dictionnaire de l’ameublement, 1:502–3.
  180. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 131; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 144: “les viandes de ce premier service estoient si fort hachées, descoupées et desguisées, qu’elles en estoient incogneuës.” Tomasik, in “Fishes, Fowl, and La Fleur de toute cuisine,” 25–51, discusses Rabelais’s representation of the banquet in Le Quart livre in the context of sixteenth-century cookbooks. On 29, he quotes Pierre Belon, from his book L’histoire de la nature des oyseaux, as boasting about French superiority in their cuisine: “Et de vray les Françoys ont je ne sçay quelle maiesté plus grande: car on leur sert mille petits desguisements de chairs, pour l’entrée de table, en diverses pieces de vaisselles” [And in truth, the French have some kind of greater majesty, for they are served a thousand little disguised meats as appetizers, in various pieces of tableware]. Here, disguised foods are presented as superior, whereas the storyteller in the novel criticizes such affectation. Clearly, The Island of Hermaphrodites evokes Rabelais’s banquets by suggesting an inordinate number of dishes; yet the actual dishes served seem modest compared to Gaster’s banquet in Rabelais’s Fourth Book (these dishes are listed on 42–49 in the Appendix of Tomasik’s chapter). See also Tomasik, “To Cook, Perchance to Dream,” 34–43, for the utopian or imaginative nature of some cookbooks.
  181. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 132; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 145: “Ayant en ce premier service (comme nous disons en nostre patois) aucunement estourdy leur grosse faim, on apporta la viande rostie avec la mesme ceremonie que la precedente. Ils appeloient cela le second. Toutes ces viandes estoient tellement sophistiquées, soit pour les saulces soit pour l’appareil, que je m’asseure que je vous serois ennuyeux de vous en faire le recit, joint que j’en ay perdu la memoire de la meilleure partie. Je remarquay seulement que quelques viandes que nous lardons par deça ne l’estoient point. Je pensois que ce fust quelque ceremonie Judaïque.”
  182. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 131; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 144: “ils arrestoient seulement à la passade ce qu’ils vouloient, et repoussoient le surplus.”
  183. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 132; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 145–46: “Parmy ces viandes, il y avoit quelques patisseries ausquelles ils avoient donné des noms d’alchimie, comme excitation, erection, projection, multiplication, et autres noms signifians la vertu, et la propriété de chacune chose. . .”
  184. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 132; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 146: “outre le gentil-homme servant qui apportoit les verres et faisoit l’essay, il y en avoit encore deux autres qui apporterent les assiettes que j’avois veuës à la credence où estoit ceste neige et ceste glace, desquelles l’Hermaphrodite prenoit tantost de l’une et tantost de l’autre, selon qu’il luy venoit en la fantasie, pour les mettre dans son vin à fin de le rendre plus froid. . .”
  185. Albala, Eating Right, 79.
  186. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 132; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 146: “Il y avoir aussi quelques plats de salade qui n’estoit pas comme celles que nous mangeons de çà, car il y avoit tant de sortes de choses qu’à peine ceux qui les mangent les peuvent distinguer.”
  187. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 133; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 146: “ils la prenoient avec des fourchettes, car il est deffendu en ce pays-là de toucher la viande avec les mains, quelque difficile à prendre qu’elle soit, et ayment mieux que ce petit instrument fourchu touche à leur bouche que leurs doigts. Ce service dura un peu plus long-temps que le premier, apres lequel on apporta quelques artichaux, asperges, poix et febves escossées, et lors ce fut un plaisir de les voir manger cecy avec leurs fourchettes, car ceux qui n’estoient pas du tout si adroits que les autres en laissoient bien avant tomber dans le plat, sur leurs assiettes, et par le chemin qu’ils en mettoient en leur bouche.”
  188. Albala, Eating Right, 88–91.
  189. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 133; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 147: “Apres ceci on apporta le fruict, mais c’estoit de ce qu’il y avoit de moins en son naturel, car il estoit presque tout desguisé en tartinages, confitures liquides, et autres inventions: car ils disent qu’il est fort prejudiciable à la santé quand on le mange ainsi qu’il vient de dessus l’arbre.”
  190. Du Chesne, Le Pourtraict de la Santé, 386–87.
  191. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 133; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 147: “Apres tout cela ils prenoient un peu d’anis confit, les autres du cotignat, mais il falloit qu’il fust musqué, autrement ils n’eust point faict d’effect en leur estomach, qui n’avoit point de chaleur s’il n’estoit parfumé.”
  192. Du Chesne, Le Pourtraict de la Santé, 364: “En plusieurs endroits, pour clorre l’orifice de l’estomach, & ayder à la concoction, on presente de l’anis confit. . .”
  193. Du Chesne, Le Pourtraict de la Santé, 365: “Faut apres le repas se contenir à table, sans en bouger une bonne demie heure pour le moins, en devis aggreables avec la compagnie.”
  194. Du Chesne, Le Pourtraict de la Santé, 365: “Ceux qui n’auront nul autre affaire, pourront passer le temps pour s’empescher de dormir [celuy de l’apresdinée estant le plus souvent nuisible] avec tarots, eschetz ou autres ieux de plaisir, ou le corps n’est nullement forcé, & ou l’esprit prend recreation: La musique, & autres ieux d’instruments musicaux, sera de mesme par fois un exercice recreative, & convenable à ceux qui l’ayment, qui s’y plaisent, & qui on le moyen de l’avoir.” In The Island of Hermaphrodites, musicians arrive before the banquet and tune their instruments (129; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 142), and then play again at the end of the banquet (136; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, 150).
  195. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 130; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 143.
  196. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 135; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 150.
  197. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 136; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 150–51.
  198. These verses are not the same as the English alexandrines, which consists of six iambic feet. French poetry is measured in syllables, not feet.
  199. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 139; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 155.
  200. Bodin, Les six livres de la République, bk. 1, ch. 1, 164–79.
  201. Bodin, Les six livres de la République, bk. 1, ch. 1, 178.
  202. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 141–42; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 158–59. As Dubois points out, this text is very much in the mode of polemical literature against the libertins érudits of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; Florimond de Raemond’s L’Anti-Christ is a good example of this sort of writing, as is Philippe de Mornay’s Athéomachie.
  203. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 143–44; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 161–62.
  204. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 144–46; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 162–65.
  205. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 146–51; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 165–73.
  206. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 151; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 174: “Pour acquerir l’eternité, il n’y a rien qui ne se doive souffrir.” Compare this to Romans 8:17–18 and 1 Peter 5:10, where the suffering person joins God in glory and is rewarded for the suffering. In this treatise, the celestial man is willing to suffer for the glory of his sovereign alone. Whether this sovereign is God or his king is not entirely clear in parts of the treatise, but it is clear that the good subject is to endure this sacrifice for no personal benefit.
  207. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 152; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 175: “aymant souverainement son souverain.”
  208. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 152; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 175: “Il s’unit si parfaictement en luy que la mort mesme luy est fort desirable pourveu qu’elle luy soit agreable.”
  209. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 152; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 175: “Les afflictions luy sont fort plaisantes, et tient pour une maxime veritable qu’un vie tranquille sans aucunes vagues, c’est une mer morte.”
  210. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 153; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 176: “qu’il tient toutes choses de la liberalité de son souverain.”
  211. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 154; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 178: “mais qui pourroit continüellement se separer du corps que par la mort?”
  212. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 155; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 179: “j’entends qu’il faut qu’elle ne soit pas si spirituelle qu’elle ne pense avoir un corps qu’il faut entretenir pour en pouvoir librement user, et qu’elle ne soit pas aussi si corporelle qu’elle ne se souvienne de son essence, et qu’elle est la seconde cause de la beatitude de tous les deux.”
  213. The Island of Hermaphrodites, 156; L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, ed. Dubois, 180: “Je sçay que je suis né parmy les hommes, en un certain païs, et sous un estat, c’est à dire sous certaines loix. Pourquoy trouvez vous mauvais si, voyant ces hommes affligez, le pays ruiné, et les loix renversées, je discours, je me plains, et medite sur les moyens du restablissement. Ne sçay je pas que je suis lié avec eux? Que ce perdant je me perds, que ce boulversement m’acableroit sous leur ruine?”
  214. Brétigny, L’Anti-hermaphrodite, 1606.
  215. The first re-edition of this novel in the eighteenth century (1724) was published under the title Description de l’Isle des Hermaphrodites nouvellement decouverte, contenant les Moeurs, les Coutumes et les Ordonnances des Habitans de ceste Isle. The second edition in the eighteenth century was published in 1744 with a slightly different title: Description de l’Isle des Hermaphrodites nouvellement découverte ​​ Avec les Moeurs, loix, Coutumes et Ordonnances des Habitans d’icelle, in the Journal de Henri III, Roy de France et de Pologne, ou Memoires pour servir à l’histoire de France par M. Pierre de L’Estoile.
  216. See Dubois, L’Isle des Hermaphrodites, 43–44.
  217. Havard, Dictionnaire de l’ameublement, 3:1082–95.
  218. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k744939/f4.item.r=Artus, Thomas.

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