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Masculine Power? A Gendered Look at the Frontispiece of Hobbes's Leviathan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 November 2021

Joanne Boucher
Joanne Boucher*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
*
Corresponding author. [email protected]
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Abstract

The frontispiece of Hobbes's Leviathan is justly renowned as a powerful visual advertisement for his political philosophy. Consequently, its rich imagery has been the subject of extensive scholarly commentary. Surprisingly, then, its gendered dimensions have received relatively limited attention. This essay explores this neglected facet of the frontispiece. I argue that the image initially appears to present a hypermasculine sovereign. However, upon closer inspection, and considered alongside Hobbes's economic theory, it yields to a reading of the sovereign as an ambiguously gendered figure. Reading the frontispiece through the prism of gender and the economy reveals not a static image of unwavering male power but rather one of an equivocally-sexed creature teeming with life, contradictions, and complexities worthy of continued examination.

Type
Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , Fall 2021 , pp. 636 - 656
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

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