The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture Jonathan Sawday (University of Strathclyde, UK) 9780415157193

An outstanding piece of scholarship and a fascinating read, The Body Emblazoned is a compelling study of the culture of dissection the English Renaissance, which informed intellectual enquiry in Europe for nearly two hundred years. In this outstanding work, Jonathan Sawday explores the dark, morbid eroticism of the Renaissance anatomy theatre, and relates it to not only the great monuments of Renaissance art, but to the very foundation of the modern idea of knowledge.
Though the dazzling displays of the exterior of the body in Renaissance literature and art have long been a subject of enquiry, The Body Emblazoned considers the interior of the body, and what it meant to men and women in early modern culture.
A richly interdisciplinary work, The Body Emblazoned re-assesses modern understanding of the literature and culture of the Renaissance and its conceptualization of the body within the domains of the medical and moral, the cultural and political.

'At the end of the 20th century, when cyberspace and AIDS have forced us to ask questions about the future of our physical selves, it's instructive to see where we've come from. It may help us see where we're going.' - Wired

'This book is a tour de force that promises to shape the questions scholars will ask about the representation of the early modern body for years to come.' - - Medievalia Et Humanistica

'Sawday's disturbing, revelatory work is a triumph.' - The Independent

' ... this is a compendiously ambitious and provocative work.' - Times Literary Supplement

'an absorbing and ambitious book' - - The Sunday Times