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“Vertebrae on Which a Seraph Might Make Music”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Kathryn A. Hoffmann
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Extract

This Essay Took Shape in an Encounter with Bones: With Curving, Darkened Skeletons Propped on Shelves or Hanging Suspended in white cases. They are displays of tuberculosis, scoliosis, and osteomalacia (rickets) in the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh (figs. 1 and 2). With bowed bones and spinal columns twisted into seemingly impossible shapes, the skeletons give the fantastic illusion of having been caught in mid-swirl in their cases, frail objects blown by invisible winds. A few of the bones of the feet at some point dropped off one of the skeletons with rickets. They were reattached with small and now faded ribbons.

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 125 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 152 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2010

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