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Blood Matters

Studies in European Literature and Thought, 14-17
  • Edited by: and
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2018

About this book

In late medieval and early modern Europe, definitions of blood in medical writing were slippery and changeable: blood was at once the red fluid in human veins, a humor, a substance governing crucial Galenic models of bodily change, a waste product, a cause of corruption, a source of life, a medical cure, a serum appearing under the guise of all other bodily secretions, and—after William Harvey's discovery of its circulation—the cause of one of the greatest medical controversies of the premodern period. Figurative uses of "blood" are even more difficult to pin down. The term appeared in almost every sphere of life and thought, running through political, theological, and familial discourses.

Blood Matters explores blood as a distinct category of inquiry and draws together scholars who might not otherwise be in conversation. Theatrical and medical practice are found to converge in their approaches to the regulation of blood as a source of identity and truth; medieval civic life intersects with seventeenth-century science and philosophy; the concepts of class, race, gender, and sexuality find in the language of blood as many mechanisms for differentiation as for homogeneity; and fields as disparate as pedagogical theory, alchemy, phlebotomy, wet-nursing, and wine production emerge as historically and intellectually analogous. The volume's essays are organized within categories derived from medieval and early modern understanding of blood behaviors—Circulation, Wounds, Corruption, Proof, and Signs and Substances—thereby providing the terms through which interdisciplinary and cross-period conversations can take place.

Contributors: Helen Barr, Katharine Craik, Lesel Dawson, Eleanor Decamp, Frances E. Dolan, Elisabeth Dutton, Margaret Healy, Dolly Jørgensen, Helen King, Bonnie Lander Johnson, Hester Lees-Jeffries, Joe Moshenska, Tara Nummedal, Patricia Parker, Ben Parsons, Heather Webb, Gabriella Zuccolin.

Author / Editor information

Bonnie Lander Johnson is Fellow, Lecturer, and Director of Studies at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge and author of Chastity in Early Stuart Literature and Culture. Eleanor Decamp is author of Civic and Medical Worlds: Performing Barbery and Surgery.

Reviews

"A powerful and coherent collection of essays that illuminates the various facets of a fascinating subject. It greatly enriches our sense of the meanings of blood and will have a major impact in medieval and Renaissance studies." --- "The ambitious edited collection Blood Matters takes on a complicated task:mapping the conceptual terrain of blood (both as material and metaphor) in late medieval and early modern Europe . . . Reading the essays together offers an illuminating glimpse into the densely interlocking regimes of blood in medieval and early modern European culture."

Topics

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    Frontmatter

    i
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  • Publicly Available

    Contents

    vii
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    Introduction

    1
    Bonnie Lander Johnson and Eleanor Decamp
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  • Part I Circulation
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    Chapter 1. Was the Heart “Dethroned”? Harvey’s Discoveries and the Politics of Blood, Heart, and Circulation

    15
    Margaret Healy
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    Chapter 2. “The Lake of my Heart” Blood, Containment, and the Boundaries of the Person in the Writing of Dante and Catherine of Siena

    31
    Heather Webb
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    Chapter 3. Sorting Pistol’s Blood Social Class and the Circulation of Character in Shakespeare’s 2 Henry IV and Henry V

    43
    Katharine A. Craik
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  • Part II Wounds
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    Chapter 4. Mantled in Blood Shakespeare’s Bloodstains and Early Modern Textile Culture

    61
    Hester Lees-Jeffries
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    Chapter 5. Rethinking Nosebleeds Gendering Spontaneous Bleedings in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine

    79
    Gabriella Zuccolin and Helen King
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    Chapter 6. Screaming Bleeding Trees Textual Wounding and the Epic Tradition

    92
    Joe Moshenska
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  • Part III Corruption
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    Chapter 7. Corruption, Generation, and the Problem of Menstrua in Early Modern Alchemy

    111
    Tara Nummedal
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    Chapter 8. Bloody Students Youth, Corruption, and Discipline in the Medieval Classroom

    123
    Ben Parsons
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    Chapter 9. Blood, Milk, Poison Romeo and Juliet’s Tragedy of “Green” Desire and Corrupted Blood

    134
    Bonnie Lander Johnson
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  • Part IV Proof
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    Chapter 10. “In Every Wound There is a Bloody Tongue”. Cruentation in Early Modern Literature and Psychology

    151
    Lesel Dawson
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    Chapter 11. “In such abundance . . . that it fill a Bason”. Early Modern Bleeding Bowls

    167
    Eleanor Decamp
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    Chapter 12. Macbeth and the Croxton Play of the Sacrament: Blood and Belief in Early English Stagecraft

    183
    Elisabeth Dutton
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    Chapter 13. Simular Proof, Tragicomic Turns, and Cymbeline’s Bloody Cloth

    198
    Patricia Parker
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  • Part V Signs and Substance
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    Chapter 14. Blood of the Grape

    211
    Frances E. Dolan
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    Chapter 15. Blood on the Butcher’s Knife: Images of Pig Slaughter in Late Medieval Illustrated Calendars

    224
    Dolly Jørgensen
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    Chapter 16. Queer Blood

    238
    Helen Barr
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    Notes

    249
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    Bibliography

    309
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    List of Contributors

    339
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    Index

    343
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    Acknowledgments

    353
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
June 11, 2018
eBook ISBN:
9780812295092
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
368
View content
https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812295092
eBook ISBN: 9780812295092
Keywords for this book
Medieval And Renaissance Studies; Regimes; Complex Meanings; Impact Of Blood On Society; In Medical Writing; As A Source Of Identity And Truth; In Theatrical And Medical Practice; European Culture; Galenic Models Of Bodily Change; Historical And Intellectual Analogies; Interdisciplinary And Cross-Period Conversations; Science; Anthropology; Cultural Studies; European; World; History Of Medicine; Blood Truth; Medical Practice; Historical; Intellectual Analogies; Literature
Audience(s) for this book
For universities and colleges of further and higher education
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