A genius is a man or woman whose original abilities seem so extraordinary as to transcend rational explanation. The concept of genius has a long history, going back to the classical period, when a genius was a local god for a person or household. In time, the term lost its associations with religion to become a general term for the distinctive character of a given entity. The history of the concept took a marked turn in the eighteenth century when it was connected to originality. An original genius had not merely a distinctive set of characteristics but also the god-like power to invent something out of nothing. The concept of the original genius quickly gained huge cultural significance and popularity, so that ‘genius’ became the preferred name for any exceptionally promising creator.
With the rise of this concept came an interest in the genius’s particular characteristics.
First, the genius was usually understood to be male; women created children, but men created works of genius. If genius was attributed to a woman, she was usually understood to have masculinised herself in some way. Second, geniuses were usually seen as social misfits, evident most prominently in their unsuitability for marriage. Geniuses tended to be either bachelors or bad husbands. Third, geniuses, though male, combined traits stereotypically understood to be masculine and feminine. This combination meant that geniuses, though usually male, were not quite manly: traits that might be regarded as inappropriate in ordinary men, such as homosexuality or addiction, became acceptable or at least excusable in a genius. Such associations led to various attempts to distinguish between more and less culturally approved aspects of genius. The twentieth-century educational category of the gifted child, for example, was developed to protect the child from the supposedly worrying associations of genius. Nevertheless, the older myth of genius that links it to socially unmanly behaviours retains its fascination in scholarship and popular culture.
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