| Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic: Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern England Contributor(s): Harris, Jonathan Gil (Author), Orgel, Stephen (Editor), Barton, Anne (Editor) |
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ISBN: 052103468X ISBN-13: 9780521034685 Publisher: Cambridge University Press OUR PRICE: $64.59 Product Type: Paperback Published: December 2006 Annotation: This book examines the overlap between early modern English attitudes to disease and to society and explores the cultural meaning of the image of the body at the interfaces of medicine, morality and politics in Tudor and early Stuart England. In particular, it demonstrates how the body politic's metaphorical "cankers" and "plagues" were increasingly attributed to allegedly pathological "foreign bodies" such as Jews, Catholics, and witches. One can glimpse the origins of not only modern xenophobic attitudes to foreigners as carriers of disease, but also "germ" theory in general. The pathological and the political thus have a long-standing, problematic, and mostly neglected relationship, the prehistory of which this book seeks to uncover. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | Europe - Great Britain - General - Social Science | Sociology - General - Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh |
| Dewey: 820.935 |
| Series: Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture |
| Physical Information: 0.49" H x 6" W x 9" (0.71 lbs) 216 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Eastern Europe - Cultural Region - British Isles |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: This book examines the overlap between early modern English attitudes to disease and to society and explores the cultural meaning of the image of the body at the interfaces of medicine, morality and politics in Tudor and early Stuart England. In particular, it demonstrates how the body politic's metaphorical cankers and plagues were increasingly attributed to allegedly pathological foreign bodies such as Jews, Catholics, and witches. One can glimpse the origins of not only modern xenophobic attitudes to foreigners as carriers of disease, but also germ theory in general. The pathological and the political thus have a long-standing, problematic, and mostly neglected relationship, the prehistory of which this book seeks to uncover. |