Life and Legend of Catterina Vizzani

"From the time Catterina Vizzani, a young Roman woman, began wooing the woman she was attracted to, she did so dressed as a man. Fleeing Rome to avoid a potential trial for sexual misdeeds, she became Giovanni Bordoni, transitioning and becoming a male in spirit, deed, and body, through what was the most complete physical change possible in the eighteenth century. This volume features Giovanni Bianchi's 1744 Italian account of Vizzani/Bordoni, published for the first time together with a modern English translation, making available to an English-speaking audience Bianchi's objective, scientific exploration of gender. John Cleland's well-known, albeit fanciful, 1751 version of the story has also been reproduced here, shedding light on the divergent sexual politics driving Bianchi's Italian original and Cleland's greatly embellished English translation. Through a close examination of the work of Bianchi as anatomical practitioner and scholar, Clorinda Donato traces the development of his advocacy for tolerance of all sexual orientations. Chapters address the medical and philosophical enquiry into sexual preference, reproduction, identity and gender fluidity, which Enlightenment anatomists addressed as they sought to research the relationship between the mind and the reproductive organs. Meanwhile, it is the social implications of gender ambiguity which may be analysed in Cleland's condemnation of women who 'pass' as men. The volume considers Bianchi and Cleland's motivation to tell the Vizzani/Bordoni story either as either a narration of empowerment or as a cautionary tale against the backdrop of evolving sexual opinions in Europe that weighed scientific research against social practice and cultural norms"--Page 4 of printed paper wrapper.