The Eunuch

26 Feb, 2015 300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history and significance of eunuchs, castrated men who were a common feature of many civilisations for at least three thousand years. Eunuchs were typically employed as servants in royal households in the ancient Middle East, China and classical antiquity. In some civilisations they were used as administrators or senior military commanders, sometimes achieving high office. The tradition lingered until surprisingly recently, with castrated singers remaining a feature of Vatican choirs until the nineteenth century, while the last Chinese eunuch of the imperial court died in 1996.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

  • Karen Radner 2 episodes
    Professor of Ancient Near Eastern History at University College London
  • Shaun Tougher 2 episodes
    Reader in Ancient History at Cardiff University
  • Michael Hoeckelmann No other episodes
    British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at King's College London

Reading list

  • Hidden Power: The Palace Eunuchs of Imperial China
    Mary M. Anderson (Prometheus Books, 1990) Google Books →
  • Eunuchs, Caliphs and Sultans: A Study in Power Relationships
    David Ayalon (Magnes Press, 1999) Google Books →
  • The World of the Castrati: The History of an Extraordinary Operatic Phenomenon
    Patrick Barbier (Souvenir Press Ltd, 2010) Google Books →
  • Handbook of Medieval Sexuality
    Vern L. Bullough and James Brundage (eds) (Routledge, 2000) Google Books →
  • Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom: A Russian Folktale
    Laura Engelstein (Cornell University Press, 2003) Google Books →
  • The Invisibles: A Tale of the Eunuchs of India
    Zia Jaffrey (W&N, 1997) Google Books →
  • Eunuchs and Sacred Boundaries in Islamic Society
    Shaun Marmon (Oxford University Press, 1993) Google Books →
  • Chinese Eunuchs: The Structure of Intimate Politics
    Taisuke Mitamura (trans. by Charles A. Pomeroy) (Tuttle Publishing, 1970) Google Books →
  • Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India
    Serena Nanda (Wadsworth Publishing Co Inc, 1998) Google Books →
  • The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium
    Kathryn M. Ringrose (University of Chicago Press, 2003) Google Books →
  • In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele
    Lynn E. Roller (University of California Press, 1999) Google Books →
  • Eunuchs and Castrati: A Cultural History
    Piotr O. Scholz (Markus Wiener Publishers, 2014) Google Books →
  • Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond
    Shaun Tougher (ed.) (Classical Press of Wales, 2002) Google Books →
  • The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society
    Shaun Tougher (Routledge, 2008) Google Books →
  • The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty
    Shih-Shan Henry Tsai (State University of New York Press, 1995) Google Books →
  • Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome
    Caroline Vout (Cambridge University Press, 2007) Google Books →

Related episodes

Programme ID: b053bsf9

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b053bsf9

Auto-category: 306.76 (Gender and sexuality)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello. When an elderly Chinese man called Sun Yao Ting died in 1996, a brutal tradition lasting almost 3,000 years was brought to an end.