Castration is a lively history of the meaning, function, and act of castration from its place in the early church to its secular reinvention in the Renaissance as a spiritualized form of masculinity in its 20th century position at the core of psychoanalysis.

Gary Taylor is Professor of English and Director of the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies at the University of Alabama. His books include CulturalSelection: Why Some Achievements Stand the Test of Timeand Others Don't and Reinventing Shakespeare: A CulturalHistory from the Restoration to the Present. He is the general editor of the Oxford Shakespeare.

What Does Manhood Mean? 1. Contest of Texts: Christianity, Freudianity, Humanism 2. Contest of Males: The Power of Eunuchs 3. Contests of Organs: Genital Plural 4. Contest of Gods: Dream Divination 5. Contest of Reproductions: The Rise of the Penis, the Fall of the Scrotum 6. Contest of Genders: Castrating Women 7. Contest of Races: Castrated White Men 8. Contest of Kinds: Confusing Categories 9. Contest of Signs: Branded and Domesticated Male Animals 10. Contest of Times: What Would Jesus Do? The Future of Man AppendixL Thomas Middleton and A Game at Chess Acknowledgments