Aminte—him or her? About a tiny zone of turbulence in criticism

With his/her two surreptitious appearances in “Mandoline” and in Les Uns et les Autres, Aminte is a fête galante character. Male heir of the shepherds of Virgil and Tasso who became a shepherdess with the advent of Preciosity, he or she leaves a mark in a pastoral register, but Verlaine may also use him/her to hijack our reading and even question gender and sexual binaries.