The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England

by Gail Kern Paster

Men and women in early modern Europe experienced their bodies very differently from the ways in which contemporary men and women do. In this challenging and innovative book, Gail Kern Paster
examines representations of the body in Elizabethan-Jacobean drama in the light of humoral medical theory, tracing the connections between the history of the visible social body and the history of the subject's body as experienced from within. Focusing on specific bodily functions and on changes in the forms of embarrassment associated with them, Paster extends the insights of such critics and theorists as Mikhail Bakhtin, Norbert Elias, and Thomas Laqueur. She first surveys comic depictions of incontinent women as "leaky vessels" requiring patriarchal management and then considers the relation between medical bloodletting practices and the gender implications of blood symbolism. Next she relates the practice of purging to the theme of shame and assays ideas about pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing in medical and other nonliterary texts. Paster then turns to the use of reproductive processes in the plot structures of key Shakespeare plays and in Dekker's, Ford's, and Rowley's Witch of Edmonton . Including twelve vivid illustrations, The Body Embarrassed will be fascinating reading for students and scholars in the fields of Renaissance studies, gender studies, literary theory, the history of drama, and
cultural history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Drama, Literary Criticism

312 pages, Paperback

First published April 22, 1993

Reviews

[sophie esther · Rating 4 out of 5]

"shame, the most body-centered of affects"

(review to come)

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paster adds to the debates and dialogues about the constructions of the early modern body by focusing on humoral theory and the female body as represented on stage. As a Shakespearean, she perhaps draws too many examples from a set canon of plays and I would have liked to see her branch out a little. Nevertheless, this is an interesting discussion about how the body – especially, Paster argues – the female body is conceived and perceived of as a leaky and embarrassingly fluid vessel.

This is a scholarly book and isn’t aimed at a general or populist audience: and is best read against Bakhtin, Sawday, Foucault et al. Good for older undergraduates and anyone else interested in the complexities of the early modern body.

[maia · Rating 4 out of 5]

phenomenalllllll resource; accessible to someone not well-versed in humorism (me) without losing any complexity or detail in being so. unbelievably detailed, careful, and balanced; provides a unique perspective on the era that begins to feel more and more necessary to consider the more you read it. I really recommend this to anyone studying the late middle ages/early modern era, as well as anyone interested in shame/bodily functions/hygiene in general

3.5 rounded up, docked a star for use of lacan

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book puts me in good humour.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book, exposing how the humoral form of Galenic medicine meant that the Early Modern perception of the privates of people's (specifically women's) bodies is utterly different from our own.

The insights this gives into the plays of (especially) Shakespeare shows us that things we think of as "normal" are the opposite of that, and details of (eg) Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra, Juliet's Nurse, Bottom, are very different from how they are normally understood.

Renaissance bodies were read so differently from ours, and their expectations (over breastfeeding, menstruation, defecation, urination, pregnancy) are unexpected, to say the least.