Chapter 6 examines a different kind of bodily anomaly which informed some of the early modern period’s most influential thinking on cognition and nociception – phantom limb syndrome. This curious phenomenon is clearly described in texts by Ambroise Paré. It comes to the fore, however, in the work of René Descartes, who found in this bodily anomaly a fascinating test case for his theory of ‘non-resemblance’ in the senses. As I explore, the nature of phantom limbs seemed to Descartes to confirm his idea that pain sensations occurred in the mind rather than in the body, thus reaffirming his notion of the body as object. In this capacity, phantom limbs occur in other contemporary texts, including in the first known autobiographical description of phantom limb syndrome. Looking closely at Descartes’ published works and correspondence, however, we can see how the strangeness of phantom limbs challenged this philosopher to re-examine his own thinking about perception and the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness.

Chapter 5 examines the problematics of the altered body in relation to the doctrine of bodily resurrection. Beginning with a scholarly and literary perspective, I show how theorists attempted to square the fact of bodily change with belief in the resurrection of the same body. In John Donne’s poetry and sermons, this conflict is both anguished and productive, yielding rich depictions of the body’s scattered parts and their heavenly reunion. Issues of embodiment surfaced in a refracted form in miracle accounts which featured the supernatural restoration or replacement of amputated limbs. The ‘Miracle of the Black Leg’ was one such account; this unique tale featured a saintly surgery in which a diseased white limb was replaced with a leg from a black corpse, prompting questions about whether that flesh could really ‘belong’ to its new body. Finally, I look to burial practices. Theoretical expositions of the body’s fate after death often contrasted with the way in which ‘real’ people chose to bury their bodies and body parts; the latter often demonstrates the flexibility with which they considered embodiment.

This chapter addresses facial surgery and prosthesis. The early modern period saw the development of medical procedures aimed as much at the augmentation and transformation of the face as at its restoration to ‘normality’. These advanced procedures brought into question the morality of changing one’s appearance. These issues were heightened in discussions of the Tagliacotian rhinoplasty. Promising to graft a new nose on to the faces of men afflicted by syphilis, this operation potentially, and controversially, disguised the results of sexual licentiousness. Moreover, satirists suggested not only that the graft might be taken from another person’s flesh, but that the grafted part might retain a sympathetic connection to its original ‘owner’. The nature of the connection (or lack thereof) between a person’s flesh and their ‘true’ identity was foremost in such discussions. Hester Pulter’s poem on the subject is a witty, sharply satirical admonition against sexual incontinence. Anticipating later works by Butler and Addison, it demonstrates how rhinoplasty became a vehicle for voicing larger concerns about embodiment, sociability, and morality.

The Introduction describes recent work in the history of emotions and disability theory. Recognising the difficulties of defining early modern people as 'disabled', it argues that in this period, social and biological factors are nonetheless understood as so interwtined that differentiation between 'impairment' and 'disability' is unhelpful. It argues for a phenomenological model informed by the work of Merleau-Ponty, Drew Leder, and others as a productive means to think about early modern experiences of embodiment.

In Chapter 4, I argue that prosthetic arms and legs were ideally imagined as articulate and mobile. They were strongly linked to a narrative of rehabilitation in which the amputee regained the ability to walk, ride, and in general to ‘perform’ able-bodiedness. This trend at once indexed a person’s character to their bodily abilities and suggested similarities between the prostheticised human body and a machine or automaton. This reading of prosthetics informs a detailed analysis of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. Focussing on Lavinia’s plight after her hands and tongue are amputated, I argue that her use of a staff to write the names of her attackers is, pragmatically speaking, unnecessary. What is necessary, however, is that Lavinia utilises objects in order to resist her own objectification. By making signs, she resists others’ reading of her mutilated body as a passive sign, and regains a degree of agency. As ever, however, objects have meaning as well as people. Lavinia’s staff may allow her to reclaim her subjectivity, but it can as easily recast her as the perpetual rape victim or freakish supercrip.

Chapter 1 considers the use of castration as a means of turning the body into a money-making instrument. Castration for the purposes of creating castrato singers was a relatively rare but culturally prominent means of changing the body. The procedure created a body with unique erotic and commercial capital, which was bound up with the rise of commercialised forms of literature. The instrumental nature of castrato bodies promoted a vision of embodiment in which the body appeared as an object that could be exploited, whether for monetary gain or sexual pleasure. Hostility towards castrati arose because such men were felt to violate not only the categories of male/non-male, but those of master/servant; castrati worked for a living, but were perceived to have power over those whom they entertained. Even accounts of the sexual potency of castrati were, I argue, opportunities to objectify these anomalous bodies. The subjective experience of the castrato emerges only rarely: first, in narratives of castrato marriages, and second, in operatic roles which embrace the castrato’s sexual liminality.

Chapter 2 examines the altered body of the female mastectomy survivor. Such women may be viewed as correlates to castrati in that they too were often exoticised: the figure of the one-breasted Amazon was an erotic and ethnographic spectacle. In this guise the mastectomied woman was also, like the castrato, sexually dangerous and functionally unique, with her bodily alteration believed to confer martial advantages. Unlike castrati, however, the altered status of the Amazon body was consistently obfuscated, and was never linked to instances of medical mastectomy. This occurred in spite of the fact that mastectomy was well known as a cure for breast cancer in the early modern period; indeed, the cancerous body and the Amazonian body had troubling parallels, both being perceived as rejecting or perverting maternal function. The absolute exclusion of one-breasted bodies from the stage and from domestic narratives reveals how far the status of the altered body was determined by patriarchal social structures.

The Conclusion provides a brief overview of the scientific, social, and economic trends described in the preceding chapters. It argues that attitudes to the altered body were widely varied, characterised by flexibility and heteroglossia. It draws parallels between early modern attitudes towards the altered body and modern endeavours in bodily restoration and augmentation, including transhumanism. Embedded or extended cognition may be an apt way in which to think about these development, and these philosophical trends have much in common with early modern models of selfhood.