The Wounded Body

This edited collection explores the image of the wound as a 'cultural symptom' and a literary-visual trope at the core of representations of a new concept of selfhood in Early Modern Italian and English cultures, as expressed in the two complementary poles of poetry and theatre. The semantic field of the wounded body concerns both the image of the wound as a traumatic event, which leaves a mark on someone's body and soul (and prompts one to investigate its causes and potential solutions), and the motif of the scar, which draws attention to the fact that time has passed and urges those who look at it to engage in an introspective and analytical process. By studying and describing the transmission of this metaphoric paradigm through the literary tradition, the contributors show how the image of the bodily woundfrom Petrarch's representation of the Self to the overt crisis that affects the heroes and the poetic worlds created by Ariosto and Tasso, Spenser and Shakespearecould respond to the emergence of Modernity as a new cultural feature.

Brings together Italian and English Renaissance studies

Provides context for the transition from Renaissance to Early Modern in terms of politics, religion, and literature

Engages with key authors like Petrarch, Dante, Shakespeare, Tasso, Spenser, and more

Autorentext

Fabrizio Bondi is Lecturer in Italian Literature at Suor Orsola Benincasa University of Naples, Italy.

Massimo Stella is Lecturer in Comparative Literatures and Theory of Literature at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy.

Andrea Torre is Associate Professor of Italian Literature at Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, Italy.

Inhalt

1. Preface (Fabrizio Bondi, Massimo Stella, Andrea Torre).- 2. The Wounded Poet. On the Twenty-First Series of Deleuze's Logic of Sense (Rocco Ronchi).- 3. The Scars and the Tale, the Wounds and the Drama (Anna Beltrametti).- 4. The 'aperto segno' and the 'colpo ascoso'. The Love Wound in Cavalcanti and Dante (Gabriele Frasca).- 5. Through the Wound, and What Petrarch Found There (Andrea Torre).- 6. Untimely wounds in Shakespeare's Macbeth (Iolanda Plescia).- 7. An Anatomy of the Destructiveness of Knights. Wound Imagery and the Culture of Physical Force in 'Langue d' oïl ' Heroic Narrative (Alvaro Barbieri).- 8. Adventure and the Wound: History of a Paradoxical Relationship (Manuel Mühlbacher).- 9. The Wounded Body in Boiardo's 'Innamorato' and Ariosto's 'Orlando Furioso' (Sabrina Stroppa).- 10. The Bleeding Scar. Towards a Reading of 'Gerusalemme liberata' as the Poem of Belatedness (Giancarlo Alfano).- 11. The Meta-Physical Wound: Shakespeare's Roman Plays (Massimo Stella).- 12. 'Chacun de nous tient sa blessure ouverte, sì che tal piaga il mondo unqua risalde'. The Wound in Women's Poetry (that of Cixous and Colonna among others) (Tatiana Crivelli).- 13. A masochistic Prometheus: the Wound in Tasso's Lyric Poetry (Fabrizio Bondi).- 14. 'And of what force your wounding graces are'. Importing and Augmenting the Wound from Italy to Elizabethan England (Selene Scarsi).- 15. Amoretta and Lucrece: Wounded Identities (Luca Manini).- 16.'Risguarda quella piaga'. Stigmata and the Education of the Gaze in Early Modern Franciscan Iconography (Giuseppe Capriotti).- 17. 'What Are These Wounds?' Stigmata and/as Memory in Italian Religious Literature (Andrea Torre).