THRUST

The codpiece was fashioned in the Middle Ages to close a revealing gap between two separate pieces of men's tights. By the sixteenth century, it had become an upscale must-have accessory. This light-hearted, illustrated examination of its history pulls in writers from Rabelais to Shakespeare and figures from Henry VIII to Alice Cooper. Glover's witty and entertaining prose reveals how male van ity turned a piece of cloth into a bulging and absurd representa- tion of masculinity itself.