Early modern bodies are at once familiar and alien. In sixteenth-century English understandings of the body, the blood did not circulate but ebbed and flowed, biological predispositions stemmed from the balance of humors rather than from genetic code, and body and soul were bound together by the delicate movements of the animal spirits humming through the nerves. Disabilities could be signs of God’s wrath or badges of honor. Women were liable to undergo spontaneous sex change if they jumped too vigorously: after all, their reproductive organs were merely inverted versions of those of men, capable of externalization given sufficient exertion. Desire circulated in ways far from circumscribed by heterosexual reproduction. Skin color was increasingly racialized as a site of hierarchized biological and cultural difference, yet it was flexible enough that a mother could potentially change the skin color of her unborn child if she pictured somebody with a different skin color during conception. In such a culture, how did people understand and experience their bodies and those of others?
This course delves into that question by examining portrayals of the body in early modern English literature. During this course, we will study how early modern writers constructed and experienced anatomy, physiology, the body-soul relationship, gender, sexuality, race, and disability. Our investigation into early modern bodies will allow us to see how bodies, far from being a biological given, are historically and culturally situated in ways that shape embodied experience. 1 unit. Prerequisite: EN221, 250 or COI
