Overview

This collection of essays makes an important contribution to scholarship by examining how the myths and practices of medical knowledge were interwoven into popular entertainment on the early modern stage. Rather than treating medicine, the theater, and literary texts separately, the contributors show how the anxieties engendered by medical socio-scientific investigations were translated from the realm of medicine to the stage by Renaissance playwrights, especially Shakespeare. As a whole, the volume reconsiders typical ways of viewing medical theory and practice while individual essays focus on gender and ethnicity, theatrical impersonation, medical counterfeit and malfeasance, and medicine as it appears in the form of various political metaphors.

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9781138249240

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'This stimulating collection of essays... makes a welcome addition to a growing bibliography; and, collectively, it also makes clear how much the playwrights of this period strove not only to represent the corporeal obsessions of their culture, but to imagine them anew.' Renaissance Quarterly 'Imtiaz Habib's theorized focus on the politics of Elizabethan mental health in relation to race and discourses of nationhood yields some fascinating observations about 'racial psychoanalysis'... Louise Noble's exploration of 'mummy' and the therapeutic value of Desdemona's corpse produces some remarkable insights, while Lynette Hunter's knowledgeable study of figural/literal 'cankers' in Romeo and Juliet is equally innovative and thought-provoking... Ashgate's bold foray into the widely uncharted territory of the 'Literary and Scientific Cultures of Early Modernity' is to be recommended - I, for one, eagerly await more titles in this series.' Medical History 'Stephanie Moss and Kaara Peterson's edited volume offers up a set of useful and engaging essays that explore the historical and literary significance of various medical references and representations in the work of English dramatists.' Bulletin of the History of Medicine

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Stephanie Moss, Kaara L. Peterson

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