Skip to content
Register Sign in Wishlist
Look Inside Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic

Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic
Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern England

Part of Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture

  • Date Published: December 2006
  • availability: Available
  • format: Paperback
  • isbn: 9780521034685

Paperback

Add to wishlist

Other available formats:
Hardback


Looking for an inspection copy?

This title is not currently available on inspection

Description
Product filter button
Description
Contents
Resources
Courses
About the Authors
  • Jonathan Gil Harris examines the origins of modern discourses of social pathology in Elizabethan and Jacobean medical and political writing. Plays, pamphlets and political treatises of this period display an increasingly xenophobic tendency to attribute England's ills to 'foreign bodies' such as Jews, Catholics and witches, as well as treat their allegedly 'poisonous' features for the health of the body politic. Harris argues that this tendency resonates with two of the distinctive paradigms of Paracelsus' pharmacy which also includes the notion that poison has a medicinal power. The emergence of these paradigms in early modern English political thought signals a decisive shift from Galenic humoral tradition towards twentieth-century politico-medical discourses of 'infection' and 'containment', which, like their early modern predecessors, make mysterious the domestic origins of social conflict and the operations of political authority.

    • Interesting analysis of the image of the body at the interfaces of medicine, morality and politics in Tudor and early Stuart England
    • An interdisciplinary study drawing from a broad variety of cultural documents, from medical textbooks to popular drama
    • An outstanding contribution to early modern studies and to the history of science
    Read more

    Customer reviews

    Not yet reviewed

    Be the first to review

    Review was not posted due to profanity

    ×

    , create a review

    (If you're not , sign out)

    Please enter the right captcha value
    Please enter a star rating.
    Your review must be a minimum of 12 words.

    How do you rate this item?

    ×

    Product details

    • Date Published: December 2006
    • format: Paperback
    • isbn: 9780521034685
    • length: 216 pages
    • dimensions: 228 x 151 x 12 mm
    • weight: 0.327kg
    • contains: 2 b/w illus.
    • availability: Available
  • Table of Contents

    List of illustrations
    Acknowledgements
    Note on the text
    1. Introduction: functionalist organicism and the origins of social pathology
    Part I. Pathologizing the Body Politic:
    2. 'Enter at the least pore': early modern medicine and bodily infiltration
    3. 'Ev'ry poison good for some use': the poisonous political pharmacy and its discontents
    Part II. Handy-Dandy, Which is the Justice, Which is the Thief?:
    4. Public enemas: the disjunctions of the excremental Jewish pharmakon
    5. 'To stop her mouth with Truth's authority': the poisonous tongue of the witch and the word of God
    Conclusion: the persistence of the pathological body politic
    Notes
    Bibliography
    Index.

  • Author

    Jonathan Gil Harris, Ithaca College, New York

Related Books

also by this author

Sorry, this resource is locked

Please register or sign in to request access. If you are having problems accessing these resources please email lecturers@cambridge.org

Register Sign in
Please note that this file is password protected. You will be asked to input your password on the next screen.

» Proceed

You are now leaving the Cambridge University Press website. Your eBook purchase and download will be completed by our partner www.ebooks.com. Please see the permission section of the www.ebooks.com catalogue page for details of the print & copy limits on our eBooks.

Continue ×

Continue ×

Continue ×
warning icon

Turn stock notifications on?

You must be signed in to your Cambridge account to turn product stock notifications on or off.

Sign in Create a Cambridge account arrow icon
×

Find content that relates to you

Join us online

This site uses cookies to improve your experience. Read more Close

Are you sure you want to delete your account?

This cannot be undone.

Cancel

Thank you for your feedback which will help us improve our service.

If you requested a response, we will make sure to get back to you shortly.

×
Please fill in the required fields in your feedback submission.
×