Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Finger in the Eye: Jacques Duval’s Traité des Hermaphrodits (1612)

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Movement in Renaissance Literature

Part of the book series: Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance ((CSLP))

  • 249 Accesses

Abstract

What is the relation between kinesis and erotic writing? This chapter investigates the sensory—and sensual—resonance of an early modern medical treatise, Jacques Duval’s Traité des hermaphrodits (1612). The author himself confesses the erotic charge of his text, which describes the conduct of an intimate examination. How does it programme sexual arousal in a reader invited to mentally simulate the movements described? How, in other words, does the text appeal to the reader’s “kinesic intelligence” and to the virtual haptics of reading? These questions are shown to be especially vexed when the gesture in question concerns a being who defies the categories of gender that memory provides, and when the text itself is generically hybrid, oscillating between didacticism and titillation.

Parts of this article are elaborated in Dominique Brancher, Equivoques de la pudeur. Fabrique d’une passion à la Renaissance (Geneva: Droz, 2015).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Guillemette Bolens, Le Style des gestes. Corporéité et kinésie dans le récit littéraire (Paris: Éditions BHMS, 2010), 10. Bolens cites Jean Decety and Julie Grèzes, “The Power of Simulation: Imagining One’s Own and Other’s Behavior,” Brain Research 1079 (2006): 4–14.

  2. 2.

    François Vanoosthuyse, “Littérature et Kinésie,” Critique, “Du style!” 752–3 (January–February 2010): 160. For a bibliography on the subject, see also Bolens, Le Style des gestes, 11.

  3. 3.

    In noting that “peut-être la notion de corporéité devrait-elle recouvrir davantage de champs que ce que Guillemette Bolens envisage,” [“perhaps the notion of corporeality should be thought to extend over more extensive territory than Guillemette Bolens envisages], Vanoosthuyse gives first place to erotic literature; “Littérature et kinésie,” 167.

  4. 4.

    Vanoosthuyse, “Littérature et Kinésie.”

  5. 5.

    Jean-Marie Goulemot, Ces livres qu’on ne lit que d’une main. Lecture et lecteurs de livres pornographiques au xviii e siècle (Paris: Alinéa, 1991), 7.

  6. 6.

    Jacques Duval, Des hermaphrodits, accouchemens de femmes, et traitement qui est requis pour les relever en santé (Rouen: David Geuffroy, 1612), 397. The only modern republication is Traité des hermaphrodits, parties génitales, accouchemens des femmes, etc., (Paris: Liseux, 1880). The trial began on 7 January and ended on 7 June 1601.

  7. 7.

    Note the order: the first visit was by two surgeons, the second by a doctor, an apothecary and two surgeons; Duval, Traité des hermaphrodits, 400.

  8. 8.

    Michel Foucault, Les Anormaux. Cours au Collège de France. 1974–1975 (Paris: Seuil-Gallimard, 1999), 62–6. Stephen Greenblatt, “Fiction and Friction,” in Reconstructing Individualism. Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought, ed. T. C. Heller, M. Sosna, D. E. Wellberry (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), 30–52.

  9. 9.

    The other studies devoted to Duval’s treatise are cited in this analysis, with the exception of the excellent study of discursive forms and the question of linguistic taboos by Joseph Harris, “La force du tact’: Representing the Taboo Body in Jacques Duval’s Traité des Hermaphrodits (1612),” French Studies 72, no. 3 (2003): 311–22; concerning Duval’s discursive skill, Kathleen P. Long, Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe (Hampshire, England/Burlington, USA: Ashgate, 2006), 86–90.

  10. 10.

    The scene of the “visitation” extends, with consummate use of suspense, over three chapters (66–8).

  11. 11.

    Hélène Cazes, L’Œil et la main, Anatomies 16–18, 14 décembre 2012, accessed March 28, 2016, https://oeiletmain.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/pistes-et-documents.pdf.

  12. 12.

    Jean Riolan, Manuel anatomique et pathologique, ou abregé de toute l’anatomie (Lyon: Antoine Laurens, 1672), “Advertissement au Lecteur et Auditeur.” See Rafael Mandressi, “Le corps des savants. Science, histoire, performance,” Communications 92, no. 1 (2013): 52.

  13. 13.

    Horapollo, De la signification des notes hiéroglyphiques des Aegyptiens,… nouvellement traduict de grec en francoys et imprimé avec les figures chacun chapitre, trans. J. Martin. Paris, J. Kerver, 1543, f. n iij. et n.p.

  14. 14.

    Duval, Traité des Hermaphrodits, 51; 301 (on the dissection of hares). On 425–6 he responds to those who reproach him with the examples of the “Anatomistes” (Sylvius, Bauhin, Colomb) who have carried out “la dissection des parties interieures des Hermaphrodits” [“the dissection of the inner parts of hermaphrodites”].

  15. 15.

    On this development, see Gianna Pomata, “Sharing Cases: the Observationes in Early Modern Medicine,” Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010): 232; Duval, Traité des hermaphrodits, 302: “Puis que nous avons remarqué par les histoires qu’il s’engendre des Hermaphrodits” [“Since we have observed from case histories that hermaphrodites are engendered”].

  16. 16.

    Ibid., 383. In this particular form, the male member has the ability to retract into and protrude from the interior of the body.

  17. 17.

    Jacques Derrida, Le Toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy (Paris: Galilée, 2000), 192. My translation.

  18. 18.

    Duval, Traité des hermaphrodits, 409.

  19. 19.

    Alessandro Pastore, “Sens et expérience dans les Quaestiones de Paolo Zacchia,” forthcoming in Hermes medicus. Discours et actions de l’herméneutique médicale ( xv e-xvii e), ed. A. Carlino (Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi).

  20. 20.

    (Paris, Pierre Ramier, 1614).

  21. 21.

    Duval, Traité des hermaphrodits, 3.

  22. 22.

    Gilles Roques, “L’œil dans les locutions et expressions françaises,” Cahier des Annales de Normandie. Mélanges René Lepelley 26 (1995): 380–81, accessed 30 August 2014, http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/annor_0570-1600_1995_hos_26_1_2283

  23. 23.

    Laurent Joubert, Erreurs Populaires (Bordeaux: Simon Millanges, 1578), 467–8.

  24. 24.

    “Pource qu’il n’y a que le Medecin seul qui voye clair en la cognoissance des maladies, de leurs causes, evenements et remedes […]” (Paris, Jean Libert, 1624), aivr.

  25. 25.

    For the finger in the eye in another context, see “Le corps et la toile, ou le corps du peintre dans l’art contemporain (Pollock, Johns, Lichtenstein, Art corporel),” in Les Figures du corps dans la littérature et la peinture anglaises et américaines, ed. B. Brugière (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1991), 326. For the dichotomy between seeing and touching, see also Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l’invisible (Paris: Gallimard, 1964).

  26. 26.

    Terence Cave, Recognitions. A Study in Poetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).

  27. 27.

    Caspar Bauhin, De Hermaphroditorum monstrorumque partuum natura (Oppenheim: Galler, De Bry, 1614), cited by Long, Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe, 57.

  28. 28.

    Foucault, Les Anormaux, 63.

  29. 29.

    Duval, Traité des hermaphrodits, chap. 68: “Suitte de la visitation premiere et comme l’hauteur [sic] sonda les parties naturelles dudit Marin le Marcis avec le doigt, en quoy faisant il trouva son membre viril et de sa situation,” [“The continuation of the first examination and how the author investigated the natural parts of the said Marin le Marcis with his finger, by doing which he found his virile member and its location”], 404–5.

  30. 30.

    “Et ne fus reprimé d’aucune honte, memoratif de la sentence d’Aristote sur la fin du premier livre des parties des animaux et de leurs causes. Où il blasme les Philosophes, qui ont laissé arriere la consideration de quelques animaux, et des parties d’iceux, pour leur sembler deshonnestes à l’attouchement, et vergongneuses à l’exposition,” [“And I was touched by no shame, since I remembered Aristotle’s declaration at the end of the first book of the parts of the animals and their causes, where he condemns philosophers who have not considered some animals and their parts on account of their appearing unseemly to touch, and shameful to discuss.”]; Duval, 402–3.

  31. 31.

    Duval, “Advertissement au Lecteur.”

  32. 32.

    According to Quintilien, the word “figure … s’applique à des attitudes et, pourrait-on dire, à des gestes [du langage],” Institution oratoire, tome v, books VIII et IX, ed. and trans. J. Cousin (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1978), 159.

  33. 33.

    Duval, Des hermaphrodits, chap. 15: “Du corps de la matrice, de son orifice, sa louange, et des signes de conception” [“On the body of the uterus, its orifice, its praise, and of signs of conception”], 107.

  34. 34.

    Duval, “Advertissement au Lecteur.”

  35. 35.

    Duval, 409.

  36. 36.

    Extract cited by Harris, “‘La force du tact’”: 314. On L’École des filles, probably written by Claude le Petit, see Michel Jeanneret, Eros rebelle. Littérature et dissidence à l’ère classique (Paris: Seuil, 2003), 217–18, and more generally chapter 8, “Livres aphrodisiaques.”

  37. 37.

    Antonio Beccadelli, Hermaphroditus, ed. and trans. E. O’Connor (Lenham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2001 [1925]), 19.

  38. 38.

    L’Hermaphrodite de Panormita ( xvi e siècle), traduit pour la première fois avec le texte latin et un choix de notes de Forberg (Paris: Isidore Liseux, 1892), 2: 119.

  39. 39.

    Pierre Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique, 11th ed. (Paris: Beuchot, 1820), 657.

  40. 40.

    Aristotle, Problemata, trans. E. S. Forster (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927), vii, 1–2, 886a, 24–35, accessed 28 March 2016, https://archive.org/stream/workstranslatedi07arisuoft/workstranslatedi07arisuoft_djvu.txt. I have corrected the last sentence, which is erroneous (“towards the condition observed in another person”). For a commentary on this passage see Roberto Poma, Magie et guérison. La rationalité de la médecine magique ( xvi e – xvii e siècles) (Paris: Orizons, 2009), 229–32.

  41. 41.

    Aristotle, 232.

  42. 42.

    Girolamo Fracastor, Liber I de sympathia et antiphatia rerum, de contagione et contagiosis morbis, et eorum curatione libri tres (Lyon: Guillaume Gazel, 1550), “De aliis quibusdam consensibus phantasiae,” 199. The parallel between the two texts is proposed by Giulio Guastavini, a collaborator with Casaubon, in his Commentarii in priores decem Aristotelis Problematum sectiones (Lyon: Horace Cardon, 1608), 273.

  43. 43.

    Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1990); see the last chapter in particular.

  44. 44.

    Alain Berthoz, in his preface to Bolens’s Le Style des gestes, stresses the eclecticism of the examples she analyses, but defends them as necessary in order to show the universality of “corporéité et de la kinésie dans le récit littéraire” [“corporeity and kinesis in literary narrative”]; Bolens, Le Style des gestes, xii. It is true that the author is concerned with showing the applicability of an ahistorical cognitive model. On the other hand, Daniel Punday insists on the historical character of his perspective in his important study Narrative Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Narratology (New York-Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 2003). Punday demonstrates the relationship between narrativization, reading and the conception of the body, and how textual accounts reflect the epistemological conditions of specific historic moments; Narrative Bodies, 11.

  45. 45.

    Goulemot, Ces livres qu’on ne lit que d’une main, 9; Joseph Bédier, Les Fabliaux: études de littérature populaire et d’histoire littéraire du Moyen Âge (Paris: E. Bouillon, 1893), 358.

Bibliography

  • Aristotle. Problemata. Translated by E. S. Forster. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauhin, Caspar. De Hermaphroditorum Monstrorumque Partuum Natura. Oppenheim: Galler for De Bry, 1614.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bayle, Pierre. Dictionnaire historique et critique. 11th ed. Paris: Beuchot, 1820.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beccadelli, Antonio. L’Hermaphrodite de Panormita (xvi e siècle), traduit pour la première fois avec le texte latin et un choix de notes de Forberg. Paris: Isidore Liseux, 1892.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. Hermaphroditus. Edited and Translated by E. O’Connor. 1925; repr. Lenham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bédier, Joseph. Les Fabliaux: études de littérature populaire et d’histoire littéraire du Moyen Âge. Paris: E. Bouillon, 1893.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bolens, Guillemette. Le Style des gestes. Corporéité et kinésie dans le récit littéraire. Paris: Éditions BHMS, 2010.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bouvard, Charles. Description de la maladie, de la mort et de la vie de Mme la duchesse de Mercoeur, décédée en son château d’Anet, le 6 septembre 1623. Paris: J. Sibert, 1624.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brancher, Dominique. Equivoques de la pudeur. Fabrique d’une passion à la Renaissance. Geneva: Droz, 2015.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brugière, B. Les Figures du corps: dans la littérature et la peinture anglaises et américaines. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cave, Terence. Recognitions. A Study in Poetics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cazes, Hélène. L’Œil et la main, Anatomies 16–18, 14 décembre 2012. Accessed 28 March 2016. https://oeiletmain.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/pistes-et-documents.pdf

  • Decety, Jean, and Julie Grèzes. The Power of Simulation: Imagining One’s Own and Other’s Behavior. Brain Research 1079 (2006): 4–14.

    Google Scholar 

  • Derrida, Jacques. Le Toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy. Paris: Galilée, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duval, Jacques. Des hermaphrodits, accouchemens de femmes, et traitement qui est requis pour les relever en santé. Rouen: David Geuffroy, 1612.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. Traité des hermaphrodits, parties génitales, accouchemens des femmes, etc. Paris: Liseux, 1880.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, Michel. Les Anormaux. Cours au Collège de France. 1974–1975. Paris: Seuil-Gallimard, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fracastor, Jérôme. Liber I de sympathia et antiphatia rerum, de contagione et contagiosis morbis, et eorum curatione libri tres. Lyon: Guillaume Gazel, 1550.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goulemot, Jean-Marie. Ces livres qu’on ne lit que d’une main. Lecture et lecteurs de livres pornographiques au xviii e siècle. Paris: Alinéa, 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greenblatt, Stephen. Fiction and Friction. In Reconstructing Individualism. Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought. Edited by T. C. Heller, M. Sosna, and D. E. Wellberry. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grèzes, Julie, and Jean Decety. The Power of Simulation: Imagining One’s Own and Other’s Behavior. Brain Research 1079 (2006): 4–14.

    Google Scholar 

  • Horapollo. De la signification des notes hiéroglyphiques des Aegyptiens,… nouvellement traduict de grec en francoys et imprimé avec les figures chacun chapitre. Translated by J. Martin. Paris: J. Kerver, 1543

    Google Scholar 

  • Jeanneret, Michel. Eros rebelle. Littérature et dissidence à l’ère classique. Paris: Seuil, 2003.

    Google Scholar 

  • Joubert, Laurent. Erreurs Populaires. Bordeaux: Simon Millanges, 1578.

    Google Scholar 

  • Long, Kathleen P. Hermaphrodits in Renaissance Europe. Farnham: Ashgate, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mandressi, Rafael. Le corps des savants: Science, histoire, performance. Communications 92, no. 1 (2013): 51–65.

    Google Scholar 

  • Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Le Visible et l’invisible. Paris: Gallimard, 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pastore, Alessandro. Sens et expérience dans les Quaestiones de Paolo Zacchia. In Hermes medicus. Discours et actions de l’herméneutique médicale (xv e –xvii e), edited by Andrea Carlino. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2018.

    Google Scholar 

  • Poma, Roberto. Magie et guérison. La rationalité de la médecine magique (xvi e –xvii e siècles). Paris: Orizons, 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pomata, Gianna. Sharing Cases: The Observationes in Early Modern Medicine. Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010): 193–236.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prévot, J., T. Bedouelle, and E. Wolff (eds.). Libertins du xvii e siècle. Paris: Gallimard, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  • Punday, Daniel. Narrative Bodies: Toward A Corporeal Narratology. New York: Macmillan, 2003.

    Google Scholar 

  • Riolan, Jean. Manuel anatomique et pathologique, ou abregé de toute l’anatomie. Lyon: Antoine Laurens, 1672.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roques, Gilles. L’œil dans les locutions et expressions françaises. Cahier des Annales de Normandie. Mélanges René Lepelley 26 (1995): 375–384. Accessed 30 August 2014. http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/annor_0570-1600_1995_hos_26_1_2283

  • Vanoosthuyse, François. Littérature et Kinésie. Critique, “Du style!” 752–753 (January–February, 2010): 158–169.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Basel University, Basel, Switzerland

    Dominique Brancher

Authors
  1. Dominique Brancher
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom

    Kathryn Banks

  2. Cambridge University, Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Timothy Chesters

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Brancher, D. (2018). The Finger in the Eye: Jacques Duval’s Traité des Hermaphrodits (1612). In: Banks, K., Chesters, T. (eds) Movement in Renaissance Literature. Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69200-5_7

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation