This essay collection examines one of the most fearsome, fascinating, and hotly-discussed topics of the long eighteenth century: masculinity compromised.

Anne Greenfield is Associate Professor of English at Valdosta State University. She is editor of the book collection Interpreting Sexual Violence: 1660-1800, and she has published articles on Restoration and eighteenth-century literature, especially drama. She is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research.

Chapter 1: "Unmanning" by Anne Greenfield

Section 1: Sexual Impotence

Chapter 2: "Body Explanations and the Meaning of Impotence in Early Modern England" by Amanda L. Capern and Judith Spicksley

Chapter 3: "The Impotent Husband: Debility and Discord in Ned Ward's Nuptial Dialogues" by Leah Benedict

Section 2: Eunuchs and Orientalism

Chapter 4: "The Fetish, the Phallus, the Fantasy: Orientalism, Symbolic Castration, and the Eighteenth-Century Imaginary" by Nathan Gorelick

Chapter 5: "Eunuchs, Mutes, and the Performance of Anxiety in Orientalist Plays" by Beth Cortese

Chapter 6: "Showing the Eunuch: Disability, Sexuality, and Dryden's All for Love" by Jeremy Chow

Section 3: Symbolic Unmanning

Chapter 7: "Refining the Aura of Subversively Symbolic Castrations: Examining the Depictions of Violent Unmanning in Macklin's English Bible" by William Levine

Chapter 8: "Women Running with Scissors: Consummating Castration Anxiety in The Feign'd Courtesans" by Danielle Menge

Chapter 9: "Masculinity, Performance Anxiety, and Literary Impotence in Charlotte Charke's The History of Henry Dumont" by Mary Beth Harris

Section 4: Italian Castrati

Chapter 10: "Between History and Fiction: Representation of Castrati in Gérard Corbiau's Film, Farinelli, Il Castrato (1994)" by Jeongwon Joe

Chapter 11: "When Performing Gender Is Non-Conforming: The Need for Archives in the Practice of Theory" by Katherine Arens