Masquerade and Identities Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Marginality

Masquerade, both literal and metaphorical, is now a central concept in many disciplines. This timely volume explores and revisits the role of disguise in constructing, expressing, or representing marginalised identities, and in undermining easy distinctions between 'true'identity and artifice.The book is interdisciplinary in approach, spanning a diverse range of cultures and narrative voices. It provides provocative and nuanced ways of thinking about masquerade as a tool for construction, and a tool for critique. The essays interrogate such themes as:* mask and carnival* fetish fashion* stigma of illegitimacy* femininity as masquerade* lesbian masks* cross-dressing in Jewish folk theatre* the mask in seventeenth and eighteenth century London and nineteenth century France* the voice as mask.Tseëlon, Efrat is the author of 'Masquerade and Identities Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Marginality' with ISBN 9780415251051 and ISBN 0415251052.