The Body in Late Medieval and Early Modern Culture

by Nina Taunton, Darryll Grantley (Editor)

Overview

Taking as its chronological starting-point the female body of late medieval devotional literature, the volume moves on to a consideration of the representation of gendered bodies in later literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138263352
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/11/2016
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Nina Taunton, Darryll Grantley

Table of Contents

Contents: Introduction; Nina Taunton and Darryll Grantley; Gendered Bodies: The politics of self-mutilation: forms of female devotion in the late Middle Ages, Claire Marshall; The constructions and deconstructions of gendered bodies in selected plays of Christopher Marlowe, Doris Feldmann; Armour, flows and bliss: liquefactions of gender in The Faerie Queene Book II, Barry Taylor; ’O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain’: violence and the mother’s body on the Elizabethan stage, Felicity Dunworth; Occupational Bodies: The body archival: re-reading the trial of the Earl of Somerset, Alan Stewart; A camp ’well planted’: encamped bodies in 1590s military discourses and Chapman’s Caesar and Pompey, Nina Taunton; ’A bodie of presence’: early modern education and the elite body in the writings of Richard Mulcaster, Darryll Grantley; Mystical Bodies: Regimen animarum et corporum: the body and spatial practice in medieval and Renaissance magic, Stephen Clucas; The bodies of demons, Gareth Roberts; The miraculous royal body in James VI and I, Jonson and Shakespeare, 1590-1609, Lawrence Normand; Bodily Otherness: ’Seeing’ contagious bodies in early modern London, Margaret Healy; ’All protean forms in venery’: the textual and apparitional body in John Marston’s verse satires, Cliff Forshaw; Travellers’ tails: bodily fictions in early modern narratives of cultural difference, Susan Wiseman; Index.

Editorial Reviews

'This distinguished contribution to the study of premodern corporeal materiality definitely pushes forward postmodern notions of the body as a site for competing discourses. It investigates the tension between semiotic and somatic meanings from various angles by providing hitherto unfamiliar theoretical perspectives and by tracing continuities as well as discontinuities between perceptions of the body in the medieval and early modern periods.' Archiv für das Studium der neueren Spachen und Literaturen '... the effort to expand the purview of body studies into fresh materials and topics proves successful ...' Early Modern LIterary Studies

From the Publisher

After considering the female body of late medieval devotional literature, contributions then examine the representation of gendered bodies in later literature, exploring such topics as 16th-century occupational orderings of the male body in education, the civil service, and the army, and the periods' rituals for purification, ordering, and disciplining the flesh. Some other themes include the funtions of narrative, and the continuities and discontinuities between perceptions of the body in the medieval and early modern periods. Grantley teaches in the School of Drama, Film, and Visual Arts at the University of Kent-Canterbury. Taunton teaches English at Brunel University. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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