Androgyny, anamorphosis and double vision : Fin de siècle revisitings of the Shakespearean canon

Abstract

This paper aims at analysing the topos of the androgyne in both fin de siècle literature and some of Shakespeare’s plays. Challenging Mario Praz’s assumption in The Romantic Agony according to which the intellectual posing of Jacobean conceits was translated into “actual life” in Romantic and fin de siècle writing, the paper attempts to show that in both periods fascination for androgyny is the result of intense ontological questioning concerning gender identity and the perception of selfhood. In Swinburnes, Pater’s and Wilde’s texts, the androgyne opposes canonical conceptions of gender identity and hints at a reading of the body in terms of undifferenciated construct. In Shakespeare’s plays, androgyny is treated through the motif of the transvestite and can be approached as theatrical device staging the fluctuations of identity. The instability of selfhood is also conveyed on stage by a subtle catoptric construction of the various characters operating on complex anamorphic mirror effects. In Shakespeare’s plays and fin de siècle literature, the androgyne purports to reveal the oxymoronic nature of human nature.