Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Surgery and Selfhood in Early Modern England
    • You have access
    • Open access
  • Cited by 2
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
February 2021
Print publication year:
2021
Online ISBN:
9781108919395
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108919395
Creative Commons:
Creative Common License - CC Creative Common License - BY Creative Common License - NC
This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/creativelicenses
Subjects:
Literature, Renaissance and Early Modern Literature, British History after 1450, History
Information

Book description

Offering an innovative perspective on early modern debates concerning embodiment, Alanna Skuse examines diverse kinds of surgical alteration, from mastectomy to castration, and amputation to facial reconstruction. Body-altering surgeries had profound socio-economic and philosophical consequences. They reached beyond the physical self, and prompted early modern authors to develop searching questions about the nature of body integrity and its relationship to the soul: was the body a part of one's identity, or a mere 'prison' for the mind? How was the body connected to personal morality? What happened to the altered body after death? Drawing on a wide variety of texts including medical treatises, plays, poems, newspaper reports and travel writings, this volume will argue the answers to these questions were flexible, divergent and often surprising, and helped to shape early modern thoughts on philosophy, literature, and the natural sciences. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Reviews

‘This is a valuable, well-researched examination of how altered bodies disrupted ideas about the self within an early modern Christian context. Recommended. Graduate students and faculty’.

B. Lowe Source: Choice

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Full book PDF
Contents
  • Surgery and Selfhood in Early Modern England
    pp i-ii
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
  • Surgery and Selfhood in Early Modern England - Title page
    pp iii-iii
  • Altered Bodies and Contexts of Identity
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
  • Copyright page
    pp iv-iv
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
  • Contents
    pp v-v
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
  • Figures
    pp vi-vi
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
  • Acknowledgements
    pp vii-viii
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
  • Introduction
    pp 1-15
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
  • Chapter 1 - The Instrumental Body: Castrati
    pp 16-34
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
  • Chapter 2 - Invisible Women: Altered Female Bodies
    pp 35-55
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
  • Chapter 3 - Second-Hand Faces: Aesthetic Surgery
    pp 56-80
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
  • Chapter 4 - Acting the Part: Prosthetic Limbs
    pp 81-108
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
  • Chapter 5 - ‘Recompact My Scattered Parts’: the Altered Body after Death
    pp 109-137
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
  • Chapter 6 - Phantom Limbs and the Hard Problem
    pp 138-163
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
  • Conclusion
    pp 164-173
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
  • Bibliography
    pp 174-196
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
  • Index
    pp 197-202
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
References

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.