Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture [Hardcover]

The human body, traded, fragmented and ingested is at the centre of Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture , which explores the connections between early modern literary representations of the eaten body and the medical consumption of corpses.The Pharmacological Corpse: The Practice and Rhetoric of Bodily Consumptions The Mummy Cure: Fresh Unspotted Cadavers Medicine, Cannibalism and Revenge Justice: Titus Andronicus Flesh Economies in Foreign Worlds: The Unfortunate Traveller and The Sea Voyage Divine Matter and the Cannibal Dilemma: The Faerie Queene and Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions The Fille Vi?rge as Pharmakon: Othello and the Anniversaries Trafficking the Human Body: Late Modern Medical Cannibalism

Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture is one of those rare books that transforms one's understanding of cultural history. Its originality lies in the way it systematically opens up the bizarre contradiction in early modern attitudes to cannibalism, which enabled the extreme horror of anthrophagous violence that informs the fantasies of new world discovery to co-exist with Europeans' routine consumption of human tissue in the form of pharmaceutical 'mummy'. In the process Noble's analysisgenerates superb close readings ofmajor literarytexts, rendering them(as the best criticism always does) fascinatingly unfamiliar. - Michael Neill, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Auckland

Great sensitivity, learning, and empathy for the medical practices of the past are on rich display in Medical Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture. Noble uncovers the almost taboo subject of the early modern mummy - the medical corpse which provided healing fluids revered by medical practitioners all over early modern Europe for its potency. Students of Shakespeare will remember Othello s handkerchief, dyed in mummy conserved of maidens hearts. But Noble follows the tl³a