Called Femminielli, Or “Little Female-Male” Persons – in Naples Between the Seventeenth and the Twenty-First Century
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This paper will examine the reception of a most distinctive paradigm of gender identification – the so- called Femminielli, or “Little female-male” persons – in Naples between the seventeenth and the twenty-first century. At the center of many social scandals, the Femminielli – also known as Femminelle – have been represented according to a stunning variety of literary tropes, rhetorical practices and social functions. On the basis of the few remaining early modern visual sources, such as the etchings by Jacques Callot in the Seicento and the painting by Giuseppe Bonito in the eighteenth century, and the proliferation of literary accounts since the beginning of the twenty first century, under the forms of novels, memoirs, academic studies and medical publications, this paper will analyze the variable spectrum of responses associated with these intersectional models of gender construction and collective (dis)placement, exploring its connections with the myth of the Androgynous and the description of Venus Urania in the Platonic Symposium in order to verify how the depictions of Neapolitan Femminielli have been supported by an intricate set of rites, beliefs and superstitions, often in contrast with the doctrinal normativity of the Catholic Church. In the concluding part of the paper, it will be presented the preliminary results of an ongoing research process, focusing on the analysis of the literary tropes and the rhetorical strategies adopted, adapted and sometimes drastically reassessed by Tarantina – a very well-known Femminiello in Rome and Naples, well-acquainted with Goffredo Parise and Federico Fellini – who has recently finished writing a memoir filled with reminiscences from the years of La dolce vita and remarks on the sexual practices and ideological aspirations of Neapolitan transgenders, homosexuals and Femminielli. .