Bates, Catherine (2011) George Turberville and the painful art of falconry. English Literary Renaissance, Vol.41 (No.3). pp. 403-428. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6757.2011.01090.x ISSN 0013-8312.

Research output not available from this repository.

Request-a-Copy directly from author or use local Library Get it For Me service.

Request Changes to record.

Abstract

From classical times the imagery of the hunt was mobilized to figure two contrasting representations of the masculine subject. On the one hand, the hunt was used to depict a definitively empowered and instrumental masculinity in the figure of the good huntsman who conquers nature and successfully bags his prey. On the other, it showed a conversely disempowered and abject masculinity in the figure of the poor huntsman who misses his target, fails to catch his prey, or, most frequently, ends up caught or entangled himself. These contrasting figurations were employed with particular force when, as so often, the hunt was used as a metaphor for the sexual chase. The present article considers representations of the abject huntsman in the work of two sixteenth-century poets, George Tuberville and George Gascoigne, both of whom also translated highly popular hunting manuals, The Booke of Faulconrie and The Noble Arte of Venerie respectively. It then discusses the way the sport of falconry—a distinct subset of the hunter's repertoire—is used to foreground these contrasting and contradictory masculinities in Turberville. Specific features of falconry—above all, the fact that the falcons preferred for hunting were, on account of their superior size and weight, the females of the species—created a gendering that was unique to that sport. As the male falconer painstakingly trained (“manned”) his bird, developed an ideally “courteous” relation with her, and responded to her “disobedience” (flying away or, worse still, flying to another man), the art of falconry becomes, within a vocabulary that was otherwise deeply convention-bound if not to say clichéd, a particularly complex metaphor for the sexual chase and for representations of a peculiarly disempowered masculinity. (C. B.)

Item Type:	Journal Article
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts > English and Comparative Literary Studies
Journal or Publication Title:	English Literary Renaissance
Publisher:	Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
ISSN:	0013-8312
Official Date:	2011
Dates:	Date Event 2011 Published
Volume:	Vol.41
Number:	No.3
Page Range:	pp. 403-428
DOI:	10.1111/j.1475-6757.2011.01090.x
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access

Request changes or add full text files to a record

Repository staff actions (login required)

View Item