| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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In contrast to the epic male’s general acceptance of homosexuality, the spiritual male was expected to renounce sexual desires and practices and to adopt the celibate life. Celibacy was the ideal masculine gender role, but if a man could not follow the ideal, the only acceptable alternative was monogamous, heterosexual practices. From this period, the roots of antihomosexual thinking in Christian societies were established.
During the Middle Ages, the feudal system, with its emphasis on the soldier-knight class, ushered in a new masculine ideal, the chivalric male (Doyle, p. 30). Unlike the spiritual male ideal, the chivalric male ideal was akin to the epic male with its emphasis on the warrior-knight who possessed great physical strength, warfare skills, loyalty to his king or liege lord, and a chivalric devotion to his lady (Doyle). The knight was expected to idealize a woman to the point of adoration, much like the reverence accorded the Virgin Mary by Christians. The ideal of manhood found its fullest expression in the person of Lancelot of the Arthurian legend. Lancelot embodied all of the chivalric masculine ideals of physical strength, skill in war, devotion to king, and chivalric love of his lady. In most instances, this courtly love was not acted out sexually; however, it had a fantasized sensuality aspect to it.
Sixteenth century England saw the emergence of the Renaissance male model (Doyle). The Renaissance revitalized the virtues of learning, and the populace became increasingly independent in its thinking and inquisitive about the world around them. The model man “who sought intellectual goals that would free him from the restraints of a dogmatic church authority” (Doyle, p. 31) replaced the chivalric, warrior-knight masculine ideal. The quintessential Renaissance man was Michelangelo, an intellectual master in both the arts and sciences, who flourished under the patronage of the Catholic Church. Best known as a sculptor, he was famous for his painting of the ceiling of the Vatican’s Cistine Chapel and for his experimental drawings of the human anatomy and bird wings that anticipated modern medicine and flight respectively.
According to Doyle, the Renaissance man had a dark side. Complex and introspective, he was a person who was sometimes beset with internal angst and conflict. William Shakespeare captured the tragedy of this masculine model in his literary characters of Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear, dark, brooding protagonists who experienced great personal tragedy and degradation.