Frigiditas and Impotentia

As our Introduction makes clear, the bulk of this history will be devoted to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That was when, over a period of about 100 years, the notion of frigidity took on the thematic shape and discursive functions we recognize so easily today. The role of this first chapter is to enable our study by examining briefly some medieval and early modern discussions of ‘frigidity’ and the related matter of ‘impotence’. Summary analysis of the period before 1800 will allow us to approach our primary corpus with an awareness of historical elements that were still in play in the nineteenth century, although they may since have disappeared from view. By giving an account of these now rather obscure antecedents, we are answering the requirements of a long-term genealogy. Our examination will bring to light an intellectual tradition around an idea of frigidity that established authoritative interpretations and kept them available over five or six centuries, at least within an erudite milieu. That is why this first chapter corresponds to such a long historical period, extending from the mid-thirteenth century to the late eighteenth. Its function is to cover a great chronological span in an economical fashion.