The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance CultureAn outstanding piece of scholarship and a fascinating read, The Body Emblazoned is a compelling study of the culture of dissection the English Renaissance, which informed intellectual enquiry in Europe for nearly two hundred years. In this outstanding work, Jonathan Sawday explores the dark, morbid eroticism of the Renaissance anatomy theatre, and relates it to not only the great monuments of Renaissance art, but to the very foundation of the modern idea of knowledge. Though the dazzling displays of the exterior of the body in Renaissance literature and art have long been a subject of enquiry, The Body Emblazoned considers the interior of the body, and what it meant to men and women in early modern culture. A richly interdisciplinary work, The Body Emblazoned re-assesses modern understanding of the literature and culture of the Renaissance and its conceptualization of the body within the domains of the medical and moral, the cultural and political. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 38
Page 6
... organs? Yet, our understanding of those organs takes place within a larger mental framework which may be a product of culturejust as much as it is a function of biology. Is even corporeality itself a constant? Whilst we might agree with ...
... organs? Yet, our understanding of those organs takes place within a larger mental framework which may be a product of culturejust as much as it is a function of biology. Is even corporeality itself a constant? Whilst we might agree with ...
Page 8
... organs is denied us. To how many men is it given to look upon their own spleens, their hearts, and live? The hidden geography of the body is a Medusa's head one glimpse of which will render blind the presumptious eye.12 But it is ...
... organs is denied us. To how many men is it given to look upon their own spleens, their hearts, and live? The hidden geography of the body is a Medusa's head one glimpse of which will render blind the presumptious eye.12 But it is ...
Page 10
... organ held to possess its own will, 'a separate animal creature housed inside a woman'.21 Thus, as we shall see, the uterus in premodern culture seemed to share a set of common attributes with disease. Like disease, the uterus operated ...
... organ held to possess its own will, 'a separate animal creature housed inside a woman'.21 Thus, as we shall see, the uterus in premodern culture seemed to share a set of common attributes with disease. Like disease, the uterus operated ...
Page 21
... organs of sensory feeling into the instruments ofits own torture. Ironically, in terms ofseventeenth-century psychological theory, it is through just these organs — eyes, ears, hands — that the soul was allowed to experience, however ...
... organs of sensory feeling into the instruments ofits own torture. Ironically, in terms ofseventeenth-century psychological theory, it is through just these organs — eyes, ears, hands — that the soul was allowed to experience, however ...
Page 22
... organs, sinews —- was, as it were, miraculously dissolved. The outline of the gibbet — a skeletal framework in which condemned bodies dissolved — and the spidery structure of the nerval figure appear congruent (see Figure l). The new ...
... organs, sinews —- was, as it were, miraculously dissolved. The outline of the gibbet — a skeletal framework in which condemned bodies dissolved — and the spidery structure of the nerval figure appear congruent (see Figure l). The new ...
Contents
1 | |
16 | |
3 THE BODY IN THE THEATRE OF DESIRE | 39 |
INSIDE THE RENAISSANCE ANATOMY THEATRE | 54 |
5 SACRED ANATOMY AND THE ORDER OF REPRESENTATION | 85 |
6 THE UNCANNY BODY | 141 |
DISSECTING PEOPLE
| 183 |
8 ROYAL SCIENCE | 230 |
Notes | 271 |
Index | 316 |
Other editions - View all
The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture Jonathan Sawday Limited preview - 2013 |
The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture Jonathan Sawday Limited preview - 1995 |
The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture Jonathan Sawday No preview available - 1995 |
Common terms and phrases
anatomist Anatomy Lesson anatomy theatre appeared Barber-Surgeons Bartas blazon body-interior body’s cadaver Cambridge Carew Cartesian Cavendish Christ Clarendon Press complex corpse creation criminal culture of dissection dead death demonstration Descartes difficult discourse dissection divine Donne Donne’s Du Bartas early-modern period edition England English erotic example execution Faerie Queene female body figure final find first Fletcher gaze gesture Harvey Harvey’s History human body illustrations imagined intellectual interior john Donne knowledge language Leiden literary London male Margaret Cavendish Marsyas masculine mechanical Medicine Medusa metaphors modern nature Neoplatonic observed ofthe opened organs Oxford philosophical Phineas Fletcher Physicians poem poet poetic poetry political punishment Queene Rembrandt Renaissance Renaissance anatomy representation Royal Society sacred anatomy scientific seems sense seventeenth century sexual significance sixteenth soul specifically Spenser structure Surgeons Thomas Thomas Traherne tradition Traherne trans understanding understood Vesalian Vesalius Vitruvian whilst William Harvey women