This dissertation discusses medieval and Renaissance clerical and cultural constructions of femininity and female masculinity, and it analyses the complex relationship between such conceptions and the literary representation of the transvestite woman. Medieval theology legitimated female masculinity as transcendence of temporal sexuality. A woman who contained her affective femininity and replaced it with rational and ascetic behaviour was frequently lauded for having become male in all but body. In the middle of the first millennium, hagiographic legends abounded in which women appear to have embodied the patristic equation between spiritual rationality and masculinity. This dissertation proposes a radically different interpretation: the saint exchanges a sexualised form of femininity--ironically imposed upon her by a male society--for a non sexual but nevertheless feminine self valuation. / Early modern culture perceived transvestism in a multiform manner. It signifies monstrosity in the polemical pamphlet, serves to indicate an estimable apex of humanity in Shakespearean comedy, and represents women in roles that range from monstrous disrupter to adept uniter in the works of such other playwrights as Ben Jonson and Thomas Middleton. While the pamphlet's social commentary argues that masculinity rendered a woman monstrously unfeminine, the literature finds ways of interrogating definitions of the sex-gender system in a world which was constantly and fundamentally mutating. The drama employs elements such as inversion, monstrosity and transgressions of class to negotiate a society in flux.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--North Carolina State University, 2004 / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 210-219).

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, March, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Kassel, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Virgil Suarez, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 24, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-112).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2008. / "Graduate Program in History." Includes bibliographical references (p. 270-286).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 485-509). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Oregon, 1999. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-116). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to UO users. Address: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p1397796.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rowan University, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.