The Early Modern Corpse And Shakespeare's Theatre

Within a theoretical framework that makes use of history psychoanalysis andanthropology The Early Modern Corpse and Shakespeares Theatre explores therelationshi... » 

Within a theoretical framework that makes use of history psychoanalysis andanthropology The Early Modern Corpse and Shakespeares Theatre explores therelationship of the public theatre to the question of what constituted thedead in early modern English culture.Susan Zimmerman argues that concepts of the corpse as a semianimategenerative and indeterminate entity were deeply rooted in medieval religiousculture. Such concepts ran counter to early modern discourses that sought toharden categorical distinctions between bodyspirit animateinanimate inparticular the attacks of Reformists on the materiality of dead idols andthe rationale of the new anatomy for publicly dissecting dead bodies.Zimmerman contends that within this context theatrical representations of thecorpse or corpserevenant as seen here in the tragedies of Shakespeare andhis contemporaries uniquely showcased the theatres own ideological andperformative agency.FeaturesOriginal in its conjunction of critical theory Bataille Kristeva LacanBenjamin with an historical account of the shifting status of the corpse inlate medieval and early modern EnglandThe first study to demonstrate connections between the meanings attached tothe material body in early modern Protestantism the practice of anatomicaldissection and the English public theatre. «