Description
Book SynopsisWithin a theoretical framework that makes use of history, psychoanalysis and anthropology, The Early Modern Corpse and Shakespeare''s Theatre explores the relationship of the public theatre to the question of what constituted the ''dead'' in early modern English culture.Susan Zimmerman argues that concepts of the corpse as a semi-animate, generative and indeterminate entity were deeply rooted in medieval religious culture. Such concepts ran counter to early modern discourses that sought to harden categorical distinctions between body/spirit, animate/inanimate - in particular, the attacks of Reformists on the materiality of ''dead'' idols, and the rationale of the new anatomy for publicly dissecting ''dead'' bodies. Zimmerman contends that within this context, theatrical representations of the corpse or corpse/revenant - as seen here in the tragedies of Shakespeare and his contemporaries - uniquely showcased the theatre''s own ideological and performative agency.
Trade ReviewSusan Zimmerman delivers an elegant and concise reading of what it meant to be, or to present, or to observe, a dead body on the early modern Englih stage. -- Bruce Boehrer Zimmerman performs a tour de force of interpretation in this important book ... Advanced scholars will find it an indispensable contribution to the growing scholarship interrogating the significance of dead bodies on stage and page. A powerful demonstration of how Protestantism, anatomy, and drama were engaged in a struggle over the meaning to be attached to the material body...an illuminating exposition of theories of the corpse with an historical account of its shifting status...an outstanding project. -- Professor Peter Stallybrass, Walter and Leonore Annenberg Professor of the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania An ambitious project that represents a genuine extension of our understanding of the historical and theatrical contexts of these plays - Zimmerman provides a new and exciting theoretical framework in Walter Benjamin's treatment of tragedy. -- Professor John Drakakis, Department of English Studies, University of Stirling The considerable strengths of this book lie in its analysis of the effect of reformation ideology on the theater's representation of the corpse and Zimmerman's subtle invocation of pschoanalytic theory as a way of understanding early modern culture. Renaissance Quarterly ...a provocative and careful study ... it is clear from Zimmerman's considerable efforts in this study that there is a lively and far-reaching cultural life in the dead bodies she considers. The Sixteenth Century Journal An ambitious historicist combination of anthropology, medical history, religious and folk beliefs, and literary theory and criticism. Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance Susan Zimmerman delivers an elegant and concise reading of what it meant to be, or to present, or to observe, a dead body on the early modern Englih stage. Zimmerman performs a tour de force of interpretation in this important book ... Advanced scholars will find it an indispensable contribution to the growing scholarship interrogating the significance of dead bodies on stage and page. A powerful demonstration of how Protestantism, anatomy, and drama were engaged in a struggle over the meaning to be attached to the material body...an illuminating exposition of theories of the corpse with an historical account of its shifting status...an outstanding project. An ambitious project that represents a genuine extension of our understanding of the historical and theatrical contexts of these plays - Zimmerman provides a new and exciting theoretical framework in Walter Benjamin's treatment of tragedy. The considerable strengths of this book lie in its analysis of the effect of reformation ideology on the theater's representation of the corpse and Zimmerman's subtle invocation of pschoanalytic theory as a way of understanding early modern culture. ...a provocative and careful study ... it is clear from Zimmerman's considerable efforts in this study that there is a lively and far-reaching cultural life in the dead bodies she considers. An ambitious historicist combination of anthropology, medical history, religious and folk beliefs, and literary theory and criticism.
Table of Contents; Chapter 1; Dead Bodies; (theoretical introduction: Bataille, Douglas, Kristeva, Lacan, Benjamin); Chapter 2; Body Imaging and Religious Reform: The Corpse as Idol; (historicist analysis of shifts in sacramental, iconographic, and theological imaging of the corpse from the late medieval to the early modern periods in England); Chapter 3; Animating Matter: The Corpse as Idol in The Second Maiden's Tragedy and The Duke of Milan; (includes analysis of English public theatre);; Chapter 4; Invading the Grave: Shadow Lives in The Revenger's Tragedy; and The Duchess of Malfi; (includes analysis of English funerary customs and the practice of anatomical dissection); Chapter 5; Killing the Dead: Duncan's Corpse and Hamlet's Ghost; Epilogue: Last Words.
