The Body Emblazoned

by Jonathan Sawday

An outstanding piece of interdisciplinary scholarship, The Body Emblazoned is a study of the Renaissance culture of dissection which informed intellectual inquiry in Europe for nearly two hundred years. Though the dazzling displays in Renaissance art and literature of the exterior of the body have long been a subject of enquiry, Jonathan Sawday considers in detail the interior of the body, and what it meant to men and women in early modern culture. Sawday links the frequently illicit activities of the great anatomists of the period, to whose labors we are indebted for so much of our understanding of the structure and operation of the human body, to a wider cultural discourse which embraces not only the great moments of Renaissance art, but the very foundation of a modern idea of knowledge. Illustrated with thirty-two black and white prints, The Body Emblazoned re-assesses modern understanding not only of the literature and culture of the Renaissance, but of the modern organization of knowledge which is now so familiar that it is only rarely questioned.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Renaissance, Art History, Science

372 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Jennifer deBie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating!

Because my research focuses on Frankenstein, I've long held this rather erroneous belief that human dissection didn't really become a widely visible "thing" until the late 18th/19th century and Sawday has completely upended that notion.

Philosophers, poets, artist, and scientists all grappled with the human body and the results of those grapplings, it's truly mind boggling. Thoroughly research and engagingly written, if dense and very Cartesian, this is one I'm glad I read and only wish I'd read before actually writing my thesis!

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sawday’s book from 1995 adds to the ongoing academic project of historicising the body by framing it via the concepts of anatomisation, dissection and partitions. Treating these both literally and metaphorically, it explores constructs of the human body in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the body wasn’t viewed through a medical-scientific discourse, but in more diverse ways: via cosmology, theology, and the vexed struggle of body and anima.

Sawday’s material is broad, from the anatomical theatres of early modern Europe to the poetry of the metaphysicals. His argument about the body being mapped as a cognate to the cartographical explorations of the period is especially useful though, contrary to the title, his engagement with the blazon is rather startlingly unoriginal.

All the same, a fascinating and elegant analysis.