Feminizing the enemy

"In Feminizing the Enemy Sidney Donnell engages gender theory and cultural studies in order to shed light on cross-dressing - a common though poorly understood practice - in plays performed in Spain and Colonial Spanish America during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The author shows how certain naturalized assumptions about masculinity and femininity are unmasked through cross-dressed performance of works attributed to Lope de Rueda, Morales, Lope de Vega, Monroy y Silva, and Calderon de la Barca, yet the purpose of Donnell's book is to examine the cultural milieu in which these dramas were produced and to trace how play texts and stage productions have been deployed in changing cultural and historical contexts over time. This twofold process is an important complement to intrinsic textual analysis because it allows for the fuller treatment of dramatic works as cultural products that both contest certain understandings of society and reinscribe others."--Jacket.