Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Linda Kalof is Professor of Sociology at Michigan State University, USA and author of Looking at Animals in Human History and series editor of A Cultural History of Animals and A Cultural History of Women.The Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities of medieval western Europe conceived of the human body in manifold ways. The body was not a fixed or unmalleable mass of flesh, but an entity that changed its character depending on its age, its interactions with its environment, and its diet. For example, a slave would have been marked by her language, her name, her religion, or even by a sign burned onto her skin, not by her color alone.
Covering the period from 500 to 1500 and using sources that range across the full spectrum of medieval literary, scientific, medical, and artistic production, this volume explores the rich variety of medieval views of both the real and the metaphorical body.
A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Medieval Age presents an overview of the period with essays on the centrality of the human body in birth and death, health and disease, sexuality, beauty and concepts of the ideal, bodies marked by gender, race, class and disease, cultural representations and popular beliefs, and self and society.
Illustrations
Series Preface
Introduction
Monica H. Green, Arizona State University, USA
1 Birth and Death
Katharine Park, Harvard University, USA
2 Health, Disease, and the Medieval Body
Ann G. Carmichael, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
3 The Sexual Body
Ruth Mazo Karras, University of Minnesota, USA and Jacqueline Murray, University of Guelph, Canada
4 The Body Inferred: Knowing the Body through the Dissection of Texts
Fernando Salmón, University of Cantabria, Spain
5 Bodies and the Supernatural: Humans, Demons, and Angels
Anke Bernau, University of Manchester, UK
6 Beautiful Bodies
Montserrat Cabré, Universidad de Cantabria, Spain
7 Bodily Essences: Bodies as Categories of Difference
Monica H. Green, Arizona State University, USA
8 The Diversity of Human Kind
Monica H. Green, Arizona State University, USA
9 Cultural Representations of the Body
Samantha Riches, Lancaster University, UK and Bettina Bildhauer, University of St Andrews, UK
10 Self and Society
Sylvia Huot, University of Cambridge, UK
Notes
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
The Cultural Histories are multi-volume sets that survey the social and cultural construction of specific subjects across six historical periods, broadly:
- Antiquity
- The Medieval Age
- The Early Modern Age
- The Age of Enlightenment
- The Age of Empire
- The Modern Age
The subjects covered range from Animals to Dress and Fashion, from Sport to Furniture, from Money to Fairy Tales. Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters so that readers may gain an understanding of a period by reading an entire volume, or follow a theme through history by reading the relevant chapter in each volume. Each six-volume set is illustrated.
Titles are available as printed sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a one-off purchase and tangible reference for their shelves, or as part of a fully searchable digital library available to institutions by annual subscription or perpetual access (see www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com).
PRAISE FOR THE SERIES
A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion
“Intriguing, surprising, and thought-provoking essays covering many cultural layers of dress history.”
CHOICE
A Cultural History of Fairy Tales
“A comprehensive treatise that belongs in every academic library concerned with a form of literature that has had broad appeal for centuries and continues to do so.”
CHOICE
A Cultural History of Hair
“A thick, tangled and deliciously idiosyncratic history of hair.”
Times Literary Supplement
A Cultural History of Law
“These introductions should be of great use to scholars from across the periods.”
Law & Literature
A Cultural History of Peace
“The set is a good introduction to the study of peace and encourages looking at world history in a new way.”
CHOICE
A Cultural History of Theatre
“All six volumes are aesthetically attractive, with well-chosen cover illustrations in color and numerous halftones throughout. Page layouts with wide margins, good paper, subtitles, generous bibliographies, notes, and index all add to the appeal.”
CHOICE
A Cultural History of Tragedy
“A highly contemporary work, alert to politics, social theory and sexuality.”
London Review of Books
A Cultural History of Western Empires
“Students seeking a comparative, interdisciplinary, and compelling account of the spread of Western empires will find much of interest here.”
CHOICE
A Cultural History of Work
“[Programs] such as economics, American and world history, women’s studies, and art history will benefit from the information herein.”
American Reference Books Annual