The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture

An outstanding piece of interdisciplinary scholarship,The Body Emblazonedis 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 theexteriorof the body have long been a subject of enquiry, Jonathan Sawday considers in detail theinteriorof 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 Emblazonedre-assesses modern understanding not only of the literature and culture of theRenaissance, but of the modern organization of knowledge which is now so familiar that it is only rarely questioned.