Capitalizing upon the enduring fascination with decapitation in European culture, this collection examines--through a variety of critical lenses--the recurring "roles/rolls" of severed human heads in the medieval and early modern imagination.

CONTENTS Preface: Losing Your Head ........................................................................... vii Jefffrey Jerome Cohen Acknowledgements ........................................................................................ xi List of Illustrations .......................................................................................... xiii List of Contributors ........................................................................................ xv Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1 Larissa Tracy and Jefff Massey Non potest hoc corpus decollari: Beheading and the Impossible ...... 15 Nicola Masciandaro EXECUTION AND HAGIOGRAPHY “Like a Virgin”: The Reheading of St. Edmund and Monastic Reform in Late-Tenth-Century England ............................................. 39 Mark Faulkner A Crowning Achievement: The Royal Execution and Damnation of Eadric Streona ........................................................................................ 53 Jay Paul Gates Decapitation, Martyrdom, and Late Medieval Execution Practices in The Book of Margery Kempe .............................................................. 73 Christine F. Cooper-Rompato CONTINENTAL NARRATIVES OF PUNISHMENT AND OTHERING Talking Heads in Hell: Dante’s Use of Severed Heads in Inferno .... 93 Dwayne C. Coleman Severed Silence: Social Boundaries and Family Honor in Boccaccio’s “Tale of Lisabetta” ............................................................... 115 Mary E. Leech The Headless Giant: The Function of Severed Heads in the Ahistorical (Aventiurehafte) Dietrich Epics ....................................... 137 Tina Boyer ENGLISH ROMANCE AND REALITY “To be a ‘Fleschhewere’ ”: Beheading, Butcher-Knights, and Blood-Taboos in Octavian Imperator ................................................... 159 Renée Ward The Werewolf at the Head Table: Metatheatric “subtlety” in Arthur and Gorlagon ............................................................................ 183 Jefff Massey “So he smote of hir hede by myssefortune”: The Real Price of the Beheading Game in SGGK and Malory ............................................... 207 Larissa Tracy EARLY MODERN PRACTICE AND IMAGINATION “At the time of his death”: The Contested Narrative of Sir Walter Ralegh’s Beheading .................................................................................... 235 Andrew Fleck “Killing swine” and planting heads in Shakespeare’s Macbeth ......... 261 Thomas Herron “Tucked Beneath Her Arm”: Culture, Ideology, and Fantasy in the Curious Legend of Anne Boleyn ........................................................... 289 Thea Cervone ‟Answering the Call of the Severed Head” .............................................. 311 Asa Simon Mittman Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 329 Index ................................................................................................................... 347 Illustrations