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Early Modern Bodies is a wide-ranging and detailed introduction to a variety of different approaches to and perspectives on bodies in the early modern period, circa 1500-1750.
The collection guides readers through an examination of bodies at every stage of life, from birth to death and the afterlife, as they are situated in different social, cultural, and geographical contexts. It considers the bodies of numerous potential identities, such as criminals, prostitutes, witches, soldiers, and non-conforming sexualities. Though its focus is primarily Western Europe, the volume also pays attention to the wider world, especially with respect to developing ideas about race and 'other' bodies in what has been dubbed an 'age of exploration'. Chapters are also dedicated to analysing what it was to be human, how humankind was considered in relation to the natural world, and how those adhering to non-Christian faiths were thought about.
This book is an accessible, essential text for students and established scholars alike who are interested in the history of the body, early modern history, and gender and sexuality.
List of contents
Introduction: Early Modern Bodies - Approaches and Contexts
PART 1: THE STAGES OF LIFE Introduction: Bodies and the stages of life 1. Birth, Infancy, and Childhood 2. The Perils and Promise of Puberty 3. Adulthood: Marriage, Reproduction and Family 4. Adulthood: Single Lives 5. Old Age 6. Death
PART 2: ENVIRONMENTS Introduction: Environments 7. Humankind and the Natural Environment 8. The Court 9. The City 10. Country Bodies, or Peeking into
The Tax Collector's Office 11. Distant Bodies: Depicting Europeans in Early Modern China
PART 3: CONTEXTS Introduction: Contexts 12. Confusions and Conflations: Sex, Gender, and Changing Notions of the Body 13. Social Rank: Plain Russet Coated Captains - the Social Semiotics of Rural Workers' Clothing, c.1500-1700 14. Race: The Early Modern English Case 15. Religion 16. Politics 17. Medicine
PART 4: IDENTITIES Introduction: Identities 18. Humans 19. Non-Christian 'Others' 20. Criminals 21. Prostitutes: Identifying the Whore 22. The Body of the Witch 23. Rogues and Vagabonds 24. Soldiers and Women Warriors 25. Sodomites and Mollies 26. Sapphists and Tribades
About the author
Sarah Toulalan is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Exeter, UK. She works on histories of the body, sex, fertility and reproduction, and sexuality. She is the author of
Imagining Sex: Pornography and Bodies in Seventeenth-Century England (2007).
