An outstanding piece of scholarship and a fascinating read,
The Body Emblazoned
is a compelling study of the culture of dissection the English Renaissance, which informed intellectual enquiry in Europe for nearly two hundred years. In this outstanding work, Jonathan Sawday explores the dark, morbid eroticism of the Renaissance anatomy theatre, and relates it to not only the great monuments of Renaissance art, but to the very foundation of the modern idea of knowledge.
Though the dazzling displays of the
exterior
of the body in Renaissance literature and art have long been a subject of enquiry,
considers the
interior
of the body, and what it meant to men and women in early modern culture.
A richly interdisciplinary work,
re-assesses modern understanding of the literature and culture of the Renaissance and its conceptualization of the body within the domains of the medical and moral, the cultural and political.