Customer Reviews

The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Body Emblazoned is a wide-ranging History of what the Author terms the Renaissance Culture of Dissection. In so doing, its medical, scientific, philosophical, sociological, legal and artistic aspects are opened and cut up for our perusal. The Author demonstrates how the nature of the practice of anatomy changed over the period from, in his analogy, a voyage of discovery to a kind of colonisation through taxonomy, a classification and naming of parts. We are shown a sea-change in understanding, as the prevailing model for the body's inner workings was transformed from Microcosm to Mechanism. Along the way, we learn of the many difficulties in obtaining cadavers for dissection, of the curious architecture of anatomy theatres, and of how Rembrandt and Descartes might have met in the butchers' shops of 17th century Amsterdam. Mr. Sawday's Lit. Crit. background serves him well in his penetrating analyses of anatomical reference in the works of Spenser, Donne, Carew, Cavendish and Traherne, among others, but elsewhere it seems obtrusive, in the guise of barely relevant references to Freud, Deleuze and Joyce, for example, and in a somewhat irritating overuse of inverted 'commas'. Another irritation is the Author's heavy-handed moralizing: he is too anxious to spell out how oppressive, or misogynist, or cruel are the opinions and actions of the anatomists and their ilk: in my opinion such observations have more force when readers are left to draw their own moral conclusions. That said, one by no means has to agree with a book in order to enjoy it, and this one never lost my interest. It is a most intelligent and stimulating work, skilfully presented and nicely illustrated too.

I work in the physical sciences, not biological or medical sciences, but I absolutely loved this book. We live in these clumsy things, but most of us rarely appreciate our bodies, much less appreciate those who initially undertook the gruesome task of deciphering our anatomy long before the advent of formaldehyde or other preservatives. This book places their efforts, along with the work of those who illustrated and published their discoveries, within a sensible and coherent historical (social, religious and scientific) context. I recommend it very highly!

I read the 1996 revised paperback edition of the 1995 book. However, only a small number of minor errors has been corrected and two paragraphs have been added to the preface. The book has some 370 pages, which include 32 black and white picture pages, 44 footnote pages and 270 regular text pages.

Many interesting facts and analyses are offered for both, professionals and lay readers. Most of all on the beginning of modern European dissection in the Renaissance and its surrounding circumstances such as procurement of corpses, the ultimate punishment of public dissection after execution, dissection theaters and artistic representation of the procedures e.g. by Rembrandt. But also the parallel discovery of the world in colonialism and the discovery of the human body. And the invention of the dividing and subdividing of body units. Bonus information shed light upon missed knowledge opportunities not transported via historical motion pictures: for example that all women at Elizabeth (Spotlight Series)s court had to walk around bare breasted unless married with the queen's consent and that the executed coup plotters of Valkyrie (Single-Disc Edition) had (once again) been given for dissection for extra punishment (a procedure which was refused by the university).

You may be interested in Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers on modern anatomy and other uses of human corpses.